Messenger encounters risky rewards of covering
church in Philadelphia
By PAMELA SCHAEFFER
NCR Staff
Ralph Cipriano, The Philadelphia Inquirer reporter
responsible for the article on Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and the Philadelphia
archdiocese that appears on these pages, was invited to cover religion at the
Inquirer in 1991.
Although the Inquirer is known nationally as a crusading
paper -- it has won 18 Pulitzer Prizes since 1975 -- editors are
ultra-sensitive about criticizing Bevilacqua, said Cipriano, who thinks church
leaders should be subject to the same scrutiny as other public figures.
In 10 years, only one profile of the cardinal has appeared in the
Inquirer, Cipriano said -- one he wrote just before leaving the beat in
1993. As a result, he said, much of the information in the NCR story
will be new even to Philadelphians.
Cipriano comes from a long line of Lebanese Maronite priests on
his mothers side, including a great-grandfather who was a bishop, and
from Italian Catholics on his fathers side. Although Cipriano remains a
reporter at the Inquirer, he no longer covers religion. He and a
religion writer who followed him were both denounced publicly by Bevilacqua and
subsequently moved to other beats. Further, according to the Philadelphia
City Paper, an alternative newsweekly, efforts by a team of Inquirer
journalists to report on the Catholic church and its money in the archdiocese
were ultimately squelched.
The Inquirer did run a story on April 14, 1997, by Cipriano
describing the archdiocesan multimedia conference center. (The center is
described in Ciprianos story here.) The article got Cipriano and his
editors a verbal lashing from the cardinal in his column in the archdiocesan
newspaper. In a special mailing, a copy of the column was sent to every
Catholic household in the archdiocese. Bevilacqua charged that Cipriano got the
facts wrong and harbored bias against the church.
Bevilacqua described his efforts to head off the story before it
ran, including several meetings involving the Inquirers
senior management personnel and archdiocesan representatives. At those
meetings, Bevilacqua wrote, our concerns about bias on the part of the
reporter as well as a variety of facts related to the renovation of the
building itself were discussed. One of the editors received follow-up
correspondence from the archdiocese.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, by printing this
fallacious story, has done a great disservice to all the faithful of this
archdiocese, Bevilacqua wrote, for the story invites the reader to
a belief that the Catholic archdiocese consciously prioritizes material values
and corporate life over spiritual values and service to the poor. As your
archbishop, I assure you I will not remain silent, allowing any reporter or
news organization to unjustly malign the Catholic church.
On May 19, 1997, the Inquirer printed on its editorial page
a long letter from an archdiocesan official criticizing Ciprianos report.
It was followed by a point-by-point rebuttal from Maxwell E.P. King, then the
Inquirer editor. The archdiocese alleged a variety of errors; the
Inquirer acknowledged only one: that Cardinal John Krol had served as spiritual
leader for 27 years rather than the 29 reported, which failed to account for a
transition period before power was formally transferred. Otherwise, wrote King,
the article was accurate, fair and responsible, and he called
Cipriano an objective and ethical member of the
Inquirers staff.
Philadelphia City Paper, the areas alternative
newsweekly, reported in its On Media column in the same month, Sources
inside and outside the Inquirer say the paper recently bowed to
tremendous pressure from the Philadelphia archdiocese and opted to run only a
fraction of the information gathered for a story about archdiocese spending
during the period in which it closed parishes in the city.
Frank Lewis, author of the column, wrote another on May 22, 1997,
which began, Some at the Inquirer will tell you that the paper
covers the Philadelphia archdiocese as thoroughly and unflinchingly as it
covers any other major institution. Others, however, will contend that the
archdiocese has enjoyed tremendous control over coverage of itself for several
years, pressuring editors to scuttle articles and reassign writers.
One of the cardinals concerns about Cipriano, according to
Bevilacquas scolding in The Voice of Your Shepherd, was that
Cipriano had once said in an article that he shuns organized
religion. What Bevilacqua doesnt know is that as a result of
Ciprianos experiences on the religion beat, a full reading of the Bible
and baptism in the River Jordan, Cipriano became a Christian and, along with
his wife and two sons, a regular churchgoer.
Partly as a result of his experiences with the archdiocese,
Cipriano did not return to his Catholic roots. What really stuck in my
head, Cipriano said, was that Bevilacqua said he was going to
remake the archdiocese so that at the end of a nine-year spiritual renewal it
would be more reflective of Christ. To Cipriano, much of what was
happening in the archdiocese was the antithesis of what the Jesus
of the gospels was all about.
Cipriano is presently part of a team of reporters that covers the
city neighborhoods. He also writes for the Inquirers Sunday
magazine. Last Thanksgiving, in an investigative story that ran on the
Inquirers front page, he revealed maneuvers at the University of
Pennsylvania to preserve the eligibility of football star Mitch Marrow by
arranging an independent study course the day before the seasons final
game.
As a result of Ciprianos story, and a follow-up
investigation by the NCAA, the university voluntarily forfeited its 1997
season. Cipriano said league officials told him it was the first eligibility
scandal in the history of the Ivy League.
While covering religion, Cipriano was urged by his editors to seek
out unusual stories. His first was about a gay hairdresser who drove around
town in a beat-up Oldsmobile with a sign that said Expect a Miracle
on the dashboard. Cipriano took a 10-day trip to Israel in 1993 with faith
healer Benny Hinn. In the story that ran in the Sunday magazine, Cipriano wrote
that the pastors wacky hairdo made him look like Gumby. He got a
haircut after he read it, Cipriano said. That probably goes down as
my major accomplishment on the beat.
National Catholic Reporter, June 19,
1998
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