Greg Daly
The Editor-in-Chief and US CEO of the UK-based Catholic Herald have left the company against the background of disagreements with board members over the magazine’s November 2018 American expansion.
July 4 saw longtime Herald Editor-in-Chief Damian Thompson announce on Twitter that he and the magazine’s “new owners” did not agree on the company’s “future direction”, and that he was leaving for the Spectator “where I will be free to tell you what I really think”.
He subsequently claimed in his “first tweet as a free man” that “it’s now obvious that Pope Francis is deeply implicated in terrible scandals. My concern isn’t theological: it’s the spectacle of a corrupt Pope, something I never expected to see in my lifetime.”
The US CEO of the magazine, Robert Wargas, announced his departure a few days later.
Stake
May saw Conrad Black selling his 47.5% stake in the company in equal parts to his fellow board members Brooks Newmark, a former Conservative Party MP who resigned from office in 2015 after a ‘sexting sting’, and thrice-married publisher William Cash, but hotel tycoon Sir Rocco Forte continues to hold a controlling 47.5% stake in the company.
The Irish Catholic understands that Mr Thompson’s departure came following disagreements around the American expansion of the magazine, which has been highly critical of Pope Francis. Disagreements are understood to have focused especially on the high costs of the move which has not as yet generated anticipated returns.