Police in Italy arrested “The Big Strawberry” (Fragolona) on Friday, that’s the code name for Rosalia Messina Denaro, older sister of the Sicilian mafia’s top boss, Matteo Messina Denaro, captured in January after 30 years on the run. She is being held in preventive custody and investigated for mafia association. According to police, the …
Before the journalists climb up the back stairs of the papal plane at the start of an international papal trip, the Vatican takes away our passports, hands us the press passes we will need in the country we are visiting, the Pope’s speeches for the first day and copies of the telegrams sent to the …
Dear Blog Readers, This isn’t a proper blog post, just a series of notes as I prepare to cover Pope Francis’s trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South Sudan this week. I hope to be able to do a much more interesting and informed post when I get back. This is …
Pope Francis heads to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan Read More »
EDMONTON NOTEBOOK Dear Blog Readers, I am writing from Edmonton, Canada where I came to cover the Pope’s apology to the Indigenous people for the devastating acts of the Church against children in residential schools. From the 1850s to 1970s over 150,000 Indigenous children of the First Nations, Métis, Inuit and other groups were taken …
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 …
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 …
I have a little piece of good news to share with you which will explain why, for the next year, I won’t be posting so often on this blog, I am the newly-elected President of the Foreign Press Association in Italy (Associazione della Stampa Estera in Italia www.stampaestera.org), the biggest foreign press association in the …
Last night I met this little Bangladeshi-American girl at a special celebration in the Boston area to mark Victory Day, when Bangladesh celebrates its liberation from Pakistan at the end of the 1971 Liberation War. “Her name is Yanka,” her father said, spelling it out for me, “it actually is not really a Bangladeshi name, …