The Vatican’s official news agency has vowed to do better after an observant Irish reader spotted they refer to ‘UK bishops’ when they mean just prelates from England and Wales.
Vatican News, a news information portal provided by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, was taken to task by a concerned reader of The Irish Catholic Alan Whelan who said in an email to Vatican News that the wording might “confuse the fact that there are three distinct and separate national hierarchies and bishops’ conferences within the UK”.
The UK includes the Bishops’ Conferences of England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – which of course is part of Ireland’s bishops’ conference.
Mr Whelan asked: “Can anything be done to educate your news team on both ecclesiastical and political geography?”
In a response seen by this paper one of their news editors responded thanking him and saying he was “absolutely correct” regarding their “often erroneous use of the denomination ‘UK’ in our headline and texts”.
They added: “We will do our best to be more careful in the future. What’s more, your comments have triggered a further-reaching detail that regards the ‘tag’ we use in the publication of our web articles, not only in English, but in the other languages of Vatican News as well. We are taking immediate action to correct that too.”