c. 1998 National Catholic Reporter

UNDATED _ Ralph Cipriano, The Philadelphia Inquirer reporter responsible for the article on Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and the Philadelphia archdiocese, began covering religion at the paper in 1991.

Although the Inquirer has a national reputation as a crusader _ it has won 18 Pulitzer Prizes since 1975 _ editors are ultra-sensitive about criticizing Bevilacqua, said Cipriano, who thinks church leaders should be subject to the same scrutiny as other public figures.

In 10 years, only one profile of the cardinal has appeared in the Inquirer, Cipriano said _ one he wrote just before leaving the religion beat in 1993.

Consequently, he said, much of the information in the NCR story will be new even to Philadelphians.

Cipriano comes from a long line of Lebanese Maronite (Catholic) priests on his mother’s side and from Italian Catholics on his father’s side. Although Cipriano remains a reporter at the Inquirer, he no longer covers religion. He and another religion writer who followed him were both denounced publicly by Bevilacqua and subsequently moved to other beats.

Further, according to the Philadelphia City Paper, an alternative newsweekly, efforts by a team of Inquirer journalists to report on the Catholic Church and its money in the archdiocese were ultimately squelched.

The Inquirer did run a story last year by Cipriano describing the new archdiocesan multimedia conference center, which Cipriano reported cost some $500,000 and was never used for its intended purpose. In addition, city officials were never told about the center, a violation of city law.

The article got Cipriano and his editors a verbal lashing from the cardinal in the archdiocesan newspaper. In a special mailing, a copy of Bevilacqua’s column was sent to every Catholic household in the archdiocese. Bevilacqua charged that Cipriano got the facts wrong and harbored bias against the church.

Bevilacqua described his efforts to head off the story before it ran, including”several meetings involving the Inquirer’s senior management personnel and archdiocesan representatives.”At those meetings, Bevilacqua wrote,”our concerns about bias on the part of the reporter as well as a variety of facts related to the renovation of the building itself were discussed. …”The Philadelphia Inquirer, by printing this fallacious story, has done a great disservice to all the faithful of this archdiocese,”Bevilacqua wrote,”for the story invites the reader to a belief that the Catholic archdiocese consciously prioritizes material values and corporate life over spiritual values and service to the poor. As your archbishop, I assure you I will not remain silent, allowing any reporter or news organization to unjustly malign the Catholic Church.” The Inquirer later printed on its editorial page a long letter from an archdiocesan official criticizing Cipriano’s report. It was followed by a point-by-point rebuttal from then-Inquirer editor Maxwell E.P. King.

The archdiocese alleged a variety of errors; the Inquirer acknowledged only one: that Cardinal John Krol had served as spiritual leader for 27 years rather than the 29 reported, which failed to account for a transition period before power was formally transferred. Otherwise, wrote King, the article was”accurate, fair and responsible,”and he called Cipriano an”objective and ethical”member of the Inquirer’s staff.

In the same month, Philadelphia City Paper reported in its On Media column;”Sources inside and outside the Inquirer say the paper recently bowed to tremendous pressure from the Philadelphia archdiocese and opted to run only a fraction of the information gathered for a story about archdiocese spending during the period in which it closed parishes in the city.” A second On Media column said;”Some at the Inquirer will tell you that the paper covers the Philadelphia archdiocese as thoroughly and unflinchingly as it covers any other major institution. Others, however, will contend that the archdiocese has enjoyed tremendous control over coverage of itself for several years, pressuring editors to scuttle articles and reassign writers.” One of the cardinal’s concerns about Cipriano, according to Bevilacqua’s scolding in his column, was that Cipriano had once said in an article that he”shuns organized religion.” What Bevilacqua doesn’t know is that as a result of Cipriano’s experiences on the religion beat, a full reading of the Bible and baptism in the River Jordan, Cipriano became a committed Christian and regularly attends a nondenominational church.

Partly as a result of his experiences with the archdiocese, Cipriano chose not to return to his Catholic roots because, he said, much of what was happening in the archdiocese was”the antithesis”of what Jesus was all about.

Cipriano is presently part of a team of Inquirer reporters covering the city’s neighborhoods. He also writes for the Inquirer’s Sunday magazine.

DEA END SCHAEFFER