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Chris Patten to advise Pope Francis on modernising Vatican media strategy Chris Patten to advise Pope Francis on modernising Vatican media strategy
(about 2 hours later)
Chris Patten, the former BBC Trust chairman and Conservative party chairman, will head a committee to advise Pope Francis on how to re-vamp and modernise the Holy See's media strategy, the Vatican said on Wednesday. Lord Patten has been recruited by the Vatican to sit – if not at the right hand of God – then not so very far away as chair of a high-level committee to advise Pope Francis on media strategy.
Patten, 70, one of Britain's most experienced politicians, will be president of an 11-member committee made up of six experts from around the world and five Vatican officials. The former BBC Trust and Conservative party chairman, will head a committee to advise the pope on how to re-vamp and modernise media handling, the Vatican said on Wednesday.
It will make proposals within the next year to bring the Vatican more up to date with communications trends, improve coordination among departments and cut costs, a statement said. Patten, whose CV also includes being a cabinet minister, European commissioner and governor of Hong Kong, will preside over an 11-strong body made up of six lay experts and five Vatican officials. Its job will be to find ways of bringing the Vatican digital media strategy up to date, sort out overlapping responsibilities and, where possible, make savings.
The Vatican, which already has a number of internet sites and Twitter accounts, including that of Pope Francis, will use more digital media to reach a wider, younger audience, it said. Cardinal George Pell told a press conference that Patten was "a man with wide and senior experience in public life. He has had a wide variety of responsibilities, from his ministerial posts in government to his role at the BBC and as the last British governor in Hong Kong."
Patten, a former Conservative party chairman, also served as the last British governor of Hong Kong as well as external affairs commissioner for the European Union. The appointment is sure to cause surprise since Patten stood down as chairman of the BBC scarcely two months ago, citing health reasons. He resigned following heart surgery, saying he needed to reduce the range of roles he held.
A Roman Catholic, he also worked on behalf of the British government to manage Pope Benedict's visit to Britain in 2010. Pell acknowledged that Patten was "unwell", adding that "his first priority is to re-gather his strength". But he said: "Soon after the end of the summer, he'll be very much involved and we've discussed informally the amount of time that might be required initially and he has accepted." The cardinal said Patten had been "very pleased to accept".
He most recently was head of the organisation that oversaw the BBC, enduring three turbulent years as Britain's public broadcaster battled a series of scandals. He stood down in May after heart surgery, saying he needed to reduce the range of roles he undertook. The former Tory chairman endured three stormy years as chairman of the BBC as the corporation lurched from one controversy to the next. He was criticised over high levels of executive pay and the corporation's diamond jubilee coverage.
The other non-Vatican members of the committee come from the US, Germany, France, Spain, and Singapore The 70-year-old is a lifelong Catholic. The Vatican's only current external adviser on the media is Greg Burke, an American tapped up by the secretariat of state two years ago. Burke, a former Fox News correspondent, is a member of the conservative Opus Dei fellowship. Patten, who was educated at a London public school run by Benedictine monks, belongs to the opposite, liberal end of the Catholic spectrum.
Last year, the Vatican hired international consultancy McKinsey to prepare a report on how to improve Vatican communications. The new committee will review that report, the Vatican said. Four years ago when Benedict was pontiff he told an interviewer : "I don't agree with everything that the Vatican says." Patten added that he admired the conservative German pope "intellectually".
The Vatican has six separate communications departments – a press office, television, radio, newspaper, an internet office and a communications council, which exercises an academic and policy-making role. At the time, he had been called in by the government to sort out the arrangements for Benedict's visit to Britain, which were rapidly descending into chaos. That experience of dealing with the Vatican will doubtless stand him in good stead in a job where he is going to be called upon to tread on many an insider's toes.
They have been known not to communicate or cooperate with each other and sometimes have appeared to be in competition. In the past, one department has published important information without telling the others. Pell said one of the aims of the Patten committee would be to boost the number of the faithful reached by Vatican media, currently estimated at around 10% of the global Catholic population. He said he expected the committee to "recognise that the world of the media has changed radically and is changing".
The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, is 150 years old, and its editor is trying to modernise it to help shed its drab and staid image. Vatican Radio has been broadcasting since 1931, he said. But "no longer in most parts of the world do people listen very frequently to the radio". The cardinal said that "patterns of expenditure within the Vatican in no way correlate to the number of people who are reached".
Vatican Radio, which broadcasts in 40 languages, takes up a big chunk of the Vatican's budget and some officials have questioned whether such a big structure is necessary in the internet age.
Some of the languages the radio uses are holdovers from the period when it, like Radio Free Europe, was one of the few sources of independent information in the communist eastern bloc.