Vatican Squelches Columnist Title : Murdoch Forced to Retire Pope’s Byline in N.Y. Post

On Page 2 of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post last Monday, a quintuple-decker headline trumpeted the tabloid’s signing of three new columnists. “September,” the headline proclaimed, “is sizzling in The Post--the paper with the red-hot writers.”

Pictures and brief descriptions of the three were stacked beneath the headline. Topping the journalistic totem pole was Suzy, a New York gossip columnist who, readers were told, “joins The Post today with a startling scoop . . . and the latest on sexy actress Nastassja Kinski’s love life.” A grinning Henry A. Kissinger was at the bottom, poised to hold forth on “Star Wars” and summit talks.

And sandwiched in between was a newspaper novice. Readers were urged to turn to Page 23, where they would find “the first of a weekly series of columns by the pontiff.” By all appearances, His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, spiritual shepherd of a flock of 620 million Roman Catholics, had joined the ranks of Murdoch’s “red-hot writers.”

Appearances, however, were to prove a lot less than accurate.

What unfolded last week is a sensational tale in its own right. It involves Vatican diplomacy and journalistic hustle, with characters that include an assortment of media dealers, a host of cardinals and archbishops and a papal ghost-writer from New Jersey who introduces himself as Fred. Even the Titanic gets a bit part.

The debut column, sold by Murdoch’s syndicates to 200 newspapers worldwide, provoked a weeklong flurry of denunciations and denials, clarifications and compromises, ending with a pledge by the syndicates on Thursday to retire the papal byline. With this assurance, a Vatican official, in turn, declared that there would be no complaint with future packaging and circulation of the Pope’s public utterances in column form.

However, Archbishop John P. Foley, president of the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications at the Vatican, said in a telephone interview Friday: “There should be no impression given that the Pope is writing a column for newspapers.”

This stipulation stripped a bit of the luster off the idea for at least some newspaper editors, who had paid what was described as a “premium price” for a column on current social issues entitled “Observations by Pope John Paul II.” Emphasis on the word “by.”

‘We’ve Had It’

“We’ve had it with this,” William German, executive editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, said by telephone Friday. German said he bought the syndicated column, thinking it was “going to be a column by the Pope or the Pope’s office. . . . I was astonished by the notion, but who am I to tell the Pope what to do?”

Now, he said, it’s clear that the column will not be pounded out on the papal typewriter and will consist instead of a compilation of comments already in the public domain. He ordered the column canceled in his newspaper.

“For all I know,” German said, “it might be remarks he made 10 years ago during a stickball game in Krakow.”

The extraordinary merger of the papacy and Murdoch’s journalistic empire began last spring with a telephone call to Richard S. Newcombe, Irvine-based president and chief executive officer of both Murdoch’s News America Syndicate and Times of London Syndicate.

Photographs of Titanic

Arthur M. Klebanoff, a New York lawyer, literary agent and merchandiser, wanted to know if the syndicate would be interested in purchasing photographs of the sunken Titanic.

Newcombe wasn’t. “I was just about to hang up with him,” he recalled in an interview, “and then he said: ‘Would you be interested in anything involving the Vatican?’ I had stood up, and I sat down and said: ‘Yes, by all means.’

“Anything to do with Pope John Paul II is of significance,” Newcombe said. “In my opinion, Pope John Paul II is the most influential person alive today.” He said he had once described the Pope’s crowds as “making ‘Beatlemania’ look like a tea party.”

Klebanoff’s company, EAV Associates Inc., already had an agreement with the Vatican library to serve as its “worldwide licensing representative,” Klebanoff said in an interview. The company, he said, was appointed to market publishing and “paper products” such as Christmas cards, other cards, calendars, diaries and the like. He said he also has an agreement to market Vatican Christmas ornaments and to bring special travel tours to the library.

A Self-Described Scholar

His point man with the Vatican was Dr. Alfred Bloch, a 64-year-old, self-described scholar and Vatican expert. A somewhat rumpled-looking Polish native, Bloch goes by “Fred” and works on the papal column out of his home in New Jersey.

He said in an interview that he wrote his doctoral dissertation at the University of Paris and taught political philosophy at a state university in New York. Bloch said he has made several trips to the Vatican library, translated the Pope’s early writings for a philosophy book--”it sold a glorious 1,800 copies,” he said--and compiled an extensive index of the Pope’s public statements.

From a file cabinet in his office, Klebanoff produced a color snapshot of Bloch shaking hands with the pontiff. “Fred meets the Pope at the library,” he said.

In late May, Bloch said he began to contact his Vatican “sources” about producing a newspaper column of papal writings.

Cardinal Alfonso M. Stickler, who heads the Vatican library, responded in a letter: “Your intent to diffuse through newspapers the messages of the Holy Father is an idea we support fully.”

‘Standard 50-50 Split’

Another influential cardinal, Edouard Gagnon, was less committal but not unsupportive: “The Holy Father’s talks and writings are for the whole world and belong to it. In the measure in which there is no special copyright anyone can produce them.”

These letters helped persuade Murdoch’s syndicates to sign a contract with Klebanoff’s firm. Newcombe described the arrangement as the “standard 50-50 split.” Klebanoff and Bloch said that, while the Vatican does not accept any profits, they had voluntarily agreed to donate part of their cut to charities.

At no point was the Pope ever consulted, Foley said. And, Newcombe said, Murdoch had no hand in the deal either.

An announcement was made in July about the forthcoming column, and a Murdoch executive in London told a Reuters reporter: “I imagine (the Pope) will write on whatever he wants and it will go straight into the paper.”

Vatican’s Denial

This prompted the first Vatican denial that the Pope was going to write columns. Klebanoff and Bloch reconsulted their “Vatican sources,” they said, and were urged to proceed with the project. They also introduced a Murdoch official to one of the approving cardinals.

Bloch started preparing the columns. As he tells it, there were differences between him and his editors.

“Actually,” he said, “the column, the way I envisaged it, would have been directed at the upper level of educated people. . . . I was directed by the syndicator to approach it in the language that, well, corresponds to the language of the reader of the New York Post.”

Also, where Bloch said he often preferred to run straightforward texts of papal writings or addresses on appropriate subjects, the editors urged him to, as he put it, “mix and match” earlier writings with more current works. So he would go to his index file and find all the quotations he could on the subject at hand. These would be blended together in a single column.

Excerpts of Speeches

Bloch produced columns on international justice, on apartheid, on marriage and the family, on World War II--taken, he said, from parts of two papal speeches, including one that actually was about World War I--and on “Catholics and Jews.”

The syndicate, he said, kept asking for a column on “sexuality,” but he had held off writing on that topic.

The tone of the columns can be described as serious, the style fairly dry and straightforward.

Newspapers were given an editor’s note to accompany the bylined columns. It said: This column, taken from the writings of Pope John Paul II, is edited by Dr. Alfred Bloch with the concurrence of the highest Vatican officials.

Newspapers began running the columns last weekend. Some, like the San Jose Mercury News, ran it on their religion pages. The Sacramento Bee gave it front-page promotion. Still other papers, like the Detroit Free Press, presented the column on its general opinion pages.

Pawn in Circulation War

In Madrid, the column apparently became a pawn in a circulation war. A non-Catholic paper purchased it, promoted it heavily and ran it with the byline Juan Pablo II; a rival Catholic paper reportedly pirated it somehow right off the presses and ran it, too, proclaiming that the Pope’s words belong to everybody.

Word of the messiness in Madrid reached the Vatican, which promptly criticized the whole endeavor.

“It is inadmissible that the name of the Holy Father could be used as a journalistic byline and involved in commercial operations,” said Monsignor Guilio Nicolini, deputy chief of the Vatican press office. “It is a cause for stupefaction that this elementary principle of professional ethics could have been ignored, and in such an ostentatiously casual manner.”

Fallout was heavy. Newcombe said that the syndicates’ New York office received 150 calls Tuesday from anxious editors.

‘Reputation at Stake’

“I felt my personal reputation in this business was at stake,” he said. “ . . . I was shocked at the press release that was issued, and I knew that something had to be wrong, fundamentally.”

He flew to the East Coast and met for nearly three hours Wednesday with Foley, who was vacationing in Philadelphia. They emerged with a new set of guidelines. Future columns would be entitled “Selected Observations of Pope John Paul II,” rather than “by” the Pontiff. Also the columns would more clearly identify the exact source and context of each statement.

“We will continue to monitor the columns,” Foley said.

In the view of Klebanoff and Bloch, the upper workings of the Vatican are awash with intrigues that outsiders simply cannot decipher, and the attack on the column did not necessarily represent anything more than Nicolini’s opinion on the matter. They said they were told--again by their unnamed Vatican “sources”--that everything would blow over and to proceed.

Bloch Tells Mistake

Bloch said his mistake was in not maintaining absolute control over all aspects of the column, and he said he is worried about his reputation at the Vatican.

“See,” he said, “I’m not in command. It is frustrating. The only person Nicolini could jump on is me because I am the editor.”

Newcombe, however, believes that the controversy stems from the failure of Klebanoff and Bloch to receive permission from the proper authority--Foley--before publication.

He said the syndicates’ relationship with Klebanoff and Bloch is “under discussion with our lawyers.” In addition, Newcombe said he himself had gone to work compiling future columns, indicating that the syndicate might try to excise Bloch from the project. Significantly, a new editor’s note accompanying the column does not contain a credit for Bloch.

Contractural Arrangement

When told of this, Klebanoff pointed out that there is a contractual arrangement between his firm and the Murdoch syndicates.

Whatever, it has now been made clear to the world that the Pope has not joined the ranks of column-writers and at least one of his would-be colleagues is not happy about it.

Chronicle humor columnist Art Hoppe had begun a piece for publication today by welcoming the Pope as a colleague. “It’s a cushy, inside job with no heavy lifting,” Hoppe wrote.

He ended by noting that the Vatican had put a halt to any more papal bylines. “And it’s too bad,” Hoppe wrote. “I honestly thought you had the makings of a darn good columnist.

“Well, back to the old encyclicals.”