L’Espresso, Settimo Cielo, Sandro Magister: With the new year, “L’Osservatore Romano” is turning over a new leaf of its own. Pope Francis wasn’t satisfied with the weekly edition in Spanish that has existed for almost fifty years and is now directed by the Argentine Silvina Pérez. He wanted a new edition just for Argentina, which was launched in recent days complete with his signed inaugural dedication. And he has entrusted its editorship to another of his countrymen, Marcelo Figueroa.
And it is precisely the selection of this editor that is the biggest news, as Settimo Cielo anticipated last November 25.
The unprecedented news is that Figueroa is not a Catholic but a Protestant, a pastor of the Presbyterian Church and for twenty-five years the director of the Argentine Biblical Society, in addition to being a longstanding friend of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who wanted him to be there on his recent journey to Lund, for the celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, and has now put him into none other than the director’s chair of the official newspaper of the Holy See. More here.
