NEWS FEATURE: An American Prelate Helps the Vatican to Spread the (Good) News

c. 2000 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ John Patrick Foley knew from an early age what his task in life would be. He wanted to spread the “good news” of the Bible not only from the pulpit but through radio, television and the printed page. Foley, now 64, an archbishop and one of the […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ John Patrick Foley knew from an early age what his task in life would be. He wanted to spread the “good news” of the Bible not only from the pulpit but through radio, television and the printed page.

Foley, now 64, an archbishop and one of the most prominent Americans in the Vatican hierarchy, began his career in Roman Catholic communications at age 13 by writing radio plays on the lives of saints.


“I thought that people needed role models,” the prelate said in a recent interview in his office behind the Vatican walls. “My parents had given me a book called `You Can Change the World,’ which encouraged young people to go out and do things that would make a difference in the world. That’s what I tried to do.”

Encouraged by his teachers at Holy Spirit School in the Philadelphia suburb of Sharon Hills, Foley took the plays to radio station WJMJ, a CBS affiliate, which promptly produced them. Half a century later, he smiles as he recalls the station’s jingle: “Top of the dial and clear as a bell in Philadelphia.”

It was an auspicious start to what is proving to be an auspicious career.

Foley is president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.

While the Vatican Press Office, headed by Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the Vatican spokesman, deals mainly with press coverage of breaking news, Foley is responsible for the broad sweep of the Vatican’s relations with information media.

He oversees documentaries on the church and church issues, studies the moral and ethical implications of various media of communications and serves as the Vatican’s main English-language commentator for papal trips and Christmas and Easter rites televised to hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of people worldwide.

A graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and former editor of Philadelphia’s diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Standard and Times, Foley finds little difference in the mechanics of spreading the news of the secular world and the “good news” of his church.

But, he said, “Reporting on the church will, I hope, reflect the `good news’ in terms of what the church is doing _ charity, relief efforts, the defense of human rights. We also try to stimulate evangelical efforts through the media.

“We are not trying to manipulate the media in order to enlist its support for the church, but if we are doing the job we have to say what is the significance of events. That helps to tell who we are, what we do, what we stand for,” he said.


The Council for Social Communications also seeks to make the media aware of their responsibilities to society. It issued a widely discussed study of “Ethics in Advertising” in 1997 and on May 30 another on “Ethics in Communications.”

Once the current Jubilee Holy Year celebrations end, Foley intends to look into possible guidelines on “Ethics in the Internet.”

The ethics studies generated a number of invitations to Foley to address such bodies as the International Advertising Association and the Ministers of Communications of the Council of Europe.

“I always try to accept,” he said. “Cooperation is healthy for them and for us. The personal contact is useful, and it makes sense because we’re not only a church but a country.”

Foley is a strong believer in government regulation of broadcast frequencies and content and an advocate of guaranteed time allocated for broadcasts on religion.

“Radio and television are a public trust and should operate like guests in a home. They should not give offense,” he said. “It is reasonable for governments to set higher standards, prohibit pornography, gratuitous violence and ethnic or religious hate material. I don’t view this as a violation of freedom of speech but a protection of the right to privacy.”


Foley’s credentials for his job are impressive. He has bachelor of arts degrees in history and philosophy from St. Joseph’s University and in philosophy from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, both in Philadelphia, a license and a doctorate in philosophy, which he earned in just one year at Rome’s University of St. Thomas Aquinas, known as the Angelicum, and a master of science degree in journalism from Columbia.

His doctoral thesis, which he wrote in 1964-65 was on “Natural Law, Natural Right and the Warren Court.” It gave him a grounding in the philosophy of law that he has drawn upon ever since.

While researching and writing the thesis _ “with no copying machines, no computers to help me, just my two-finger typing” _ Foley also was filing stories to The Catholic Standard and Times six days a week on the momentous debates taking place at the Second Vatican Council.

It was a rare opportunity for a young priest ordained only two years earlier, and it came to Foley through the late Cardinal John J. Krol, archbishop of Philadelphia, who one year later sent him to Columbia Journalism School.

It was also through Krol, who was of Polish descent, that Foley made the acquaintance of the up and coming Polish prelate Archbishop Karol Wojtyla of Krakow.

Krol and Wojtyla were among the cardinals created by Pope Paul VI at the Consistory of June 26, 1967, and it fell to Foley to arrange a joint news conference for them with Polish-American journalists. In 1972, Foley accompanied Krol on a visit to Wojtyla in Krakow.


Wojtyla, as Pope John Paul II, brought Foley back to Rome in 1984.

In the line of duty, Foley has met every U.S. president since Lyndon B. Johnson. He is particularly amused by his encounter with Jimmy Carter and John Paul side-by-side on a White House receiving line.

“As I came along the line I was introduced to President Carter, who turned to introduce me to His Holiness who smiled and said not to bother, `I know him very well,”’ Foley said.

News reports not infrequently identify Foley as a cardinal, which is not correct. His is titular archbishop of Neapolis in Proconsulari.

Pope John Paul II has yet to give him the red hat of a prince of the Roman Catholic Church, but it is not unreasonable to expect that this too might come to pass.

Becoming a cardinal might mean a new assignment that would take him away from his focus on communications, but Foley is not worried about what he will do next. “I love being a priest,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what I am assigned to do because I will be doing it as a priest.”

DEA END POLK

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