Take 20 leaders of the nations with the world’s biggest economies, bring them to a beautiful, chaotic city with cobblestone streets and ancient ruins, add in delegations with a sprinkling of foreign and finance ministers, spouses, and a few children. Toss in a Queen and a Prince and some heads of UN organizations, throw in …
This past week, I went on a wild boar hunt. Not the kind that one might imagine in Italy, tromping through the Tuscan forest carrying a rifle. No, this hunt was in the city of Rome, armed with cameras. We were working on a story on the invasion of wild boars in the city. …
Dear Blog Readers, After a hiatus of over a year, I am back, more or less. The last post I wrote was on March 3rd, 2020, shortly before Italy went into a national lockdown on March 9th. It is strange to look back at those photos in the last post, Rome in the Time of …
The cobblestone streets in the center of Rome – usually teeming with tourists – are empty. At the Colosseum a woman with a big white sanitary mask on her face poses for a selfie. In St. Peter’s Square a young couple walk past in black face masks, a guidebook in hand. At the Trevi Fountain …
Two teenage girls squat on the ground at the sprawling Antananarivo garbage dump sorting detritus. Around them hills of garbage spread in all directions, little trails winding through the mounds like a golf course gone rotten. Instead of golf carts making their way down the fairways, there are trucks, 14 of them come every day rumbling their …
Dear Blog Readers, Yesterday, over two hundred journalists from the Foreign Press Association in Italy had an audience with Pope Francis. As the current President, I got to deliver a speech on behalf of the group. I worked on it for weeks and it was a summary of what I think are the challenges for …
Dear Blog Readers, Last weekend I traveled to the tiny island of Ventotene, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) off the coast of Italy, to participate in the Festival for European Solidarity in the Mediterranean (Festival dell’Europa Solidale e del Mediterranneo) bringing students, refugees, activists and journalists together to talk about how to overcome racism and …
Dear Blog Readers, Last Thursday I was between editing the Pope’s Easter Thursday Chrism Mass (where he blesses all the vats of oil to be used in Rome parishes for the year), covering an Amnesty International press conference on how they will be monitoring hate speech used on social media by politicians running in the …