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our special online feature: Bringing Rome
Back Home Part III: April
13, 2005 For religion reporters who aren't in Rome this month, here are some more ideas to get your creative juices flowing for stories about the Catholic Church – and beyond. ReligionLink will update them as events change. HISPANIC PAPACY - OR ITALIAN RESTORATION? Latinos are a fast-growing segment of the U.S. population, and the fastest-growing segment of the Catholic Church in America. They may account already for 25 percent of the nation's Catholic population, and the church is increasingly Hispanic. This trend extends across the country. How is the Catholic Church responding - or not? There are not nearly enough Spanish-speaking priests, and Catholicism is losing Latinos to evangelicals and Pentecostals. How is the Catholic Church integrating Spanish-speaking immigrants and hanging on to the Hispanic members it has? Is liturgy changing to meet the new demands? Of most immediate concerns, how high are hopes being raised that the next pope will be from Latin America? What will be the effect locally if he is? And what will be the letdown if the papacy goes back to a European? See a July 18, 2003, ReligionLink edition, "In church and beyond: developing Hispanic leaders." The March 21, 2005, Time magazine cover story could not have been more timely: "Hail, Mary," about the growing popularity of the mother of Jesus among Protestants. Now the death of a pope who was so completely dedicated to Mary - his papal motto was "Totus Tuus" (from Totus Tuus Ego Sum, Latin for "I am all yours") indicating his total devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary - has put another bright light on a figure who has for centuries divided Christians. Now she seems to be an area of common ground, and not just for Protestants and Catholics, but also with Muslims, who revere Mary of Nazareth. See a wealth of information from a 2003 BBC program on Mary. Yes - for now it is all pope, all the time. But the reality is that sometime toward the end of April there will be a new pope, duly installed and profiled, and religion writers will come dragging back to the newsroom, exhausted, with notebooks still full of great stuff but with editors looking for a change of pace. Even the pope story will cool. So start thinking about stories to do after the conclave and installation of the new pope, and start collecting some string on them so they'll be easier to put together on an extra cup of coffee. For example, Easter for the Orthodox falls on May 1. Relations with Eastern Orthodoxy will likely be a priority for the new pope. It would also be good journalism to give the Orthodox some time in the spotlight, too. Evangelicals will be meeting in Washington on religion and the environment May 2-4. Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, is May 5, and so are the National Day of Prayer and the alternative, a new National Day of Reason sponsored by humanists. Those are just a few of the non-papal events that you can find on the Religion News Service events calendar. |
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