Angel of Peace monument in Munich suburb of Bogenhausen

So it turns out that the mainstream media, and specifically Nicole Winfield of the AP and Irish Times Vatican correspondent Paddy Agnew, got it right when they reported that Pope Francis told Mahmoud Abbas that he was “an angel of peace.” Or very close to right. As the AP has clarified and America‘s Gerard O’Connell makes definitive, the pope told Abbas, sotto voce in presenting him with a bronze medal portraying an angel of peace, “Lei é un po’ angelo della pace” — “You are a bit an angel of peace.”

Ah, me of little faith! I hereby apologize to Nicole and Paddy for buying into the Italian news media’s proclivity for cleaning up papal remarks to say what they think His Holiness said, or meant to say, or should have said. (In this case, that Abbas ought to be an angel of peace.) Those two were the press pool in the room, their Italian is fluent, and the American MSM were simply following standard procedure in relying on their reporting.

After the remark was “corrected,” Ellen Carmichael was one of a number of right-wing scolds who berated journalists for letting their image of “the progressive pope” distort their stories. “There are real geopolitical consequences for such shoddy reporting, and those in the media who misrepresented the Holy See’s comments should be held to account,” Carmichael wrote over at NRO’s Corner. “It’s time for a retraction and an apology.”

OK, Ellen, isn’t it now time for a retraction and an apology from you? And likewise from Alex Margolin at Honest Reporting? And from John Hayward at Breitbart? And from Tom Gross at the Weekly Standard? Of course it isn’t.