Images of the Pope and Vatican in Italian and British Press

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Daria A. Klimenko

PhD student at the Chair of Foreign Journalism and Literature, Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

e-mail: d.klimenko@gmail.com

Section: Discussion

The paper focuses on the media image of Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI as pre­sented by publication of Italian (“Il Giornale” and “La Repubblica”) and British (“The Times” and “The Guardian”) newspapers. Content-analysis was chosen as a research method. It was applied to articles covering the papal visit to Great Britain in September, 2010. The set of articles under consideration was divided into three groups: “Religious climate of Great Britain”, “Religion as a part of popular culture” and “Vatican as a State and Pope’s personality”. The paper compares British and Italian views on the Holy See and the Pope, lining out differences between those two. An attempt of demonstration of “Ratzinger effect” is also presented.

Keywords: Benedict XVI, Vatican, Catholicism, Christianity, Ratzinger effect