Kansas City, Mo — When the National Catholic Reporter ran a story last year about priests in Africa molesting nuns, editor Tom Roberts wondered how the Vatican would react.
He didn't care too much. But he wondered.
"I can't think about what Rome is going to say," Roberts said. "The surprise this time was that the Vatican even confirmed that there was a problem."
If Roberts and National Catholic Reporter publisher Tom Fox did concern themselves with how Catholic leaders view the stories that make their newspaper, they likely would have fewer stories to publish.
National Catholic Reporter a small, independent news weekly published in Kansas City for more than three decades prides itself on being "a place where the forbidden conversations can occur," said Fox, 57.
"We seek to be a haven for Catholics and to speak for the people who can't speak for themselves," he said.
National Catholic Reporter has had several stories critical of Vatican policies and of Catholic leaders lay and clergy. Fox said National Catholic Reporter broke the story about pedophilia among priests in the 1980s and has continued with stories on priests misusing parish funds and the Vatican's refusal to investigate those and other offenses.
There has also been extensive coverage on Central America and priests and nuns who defy orders from the Vatican to stop catering to homosexuals.
In a recent story, National Catholic Reporter took aim at Rome for turning down a request for an investigation into accusations that a high-ranking priest abused young seminarians 20 years ago. The priest has denied the allegations and no charges were filed.
"It's a love 'em or hate 'em publication in some sense," said Karen Franz, president of the Long Island, N.Y.-based Catholic Press Assn.
"It has its role," Franz said. "There always needs to be a maverick to challenge the institution. But usually you don't need too many or it becomes kind of rancorous."
The Vatican did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this story.
'Weighted with innuendo'
Fox who worked at Time magazine, The New York Times and other publications before joining National Catholic Reporter about 20 years ago said there are other Catholic publications, like Commonweal and America, but none as liberal as National Catholic Reporter.
The newspaper's readership, which has held steady near 50,000 for years, consists largely of lay church professionals, nuns and priests. But Roberts says there are plenty of "bishops who wouldn't admit to reading it."
Bishop Joseph Galante of Dallas, chairman of the communications committee of the U.S. Conference on Catholic Bishops, is not one of those who secretly read National Catholic Reporter.
"I stopped reading it several years ago," Galante said. "I don't think muckraking has a place in any Catholic journalism, because I think it can violate principles of charity and respect for human beings and can often be too heavily weighted with innuendo.
"It's important that the Catholic press tries to be a unifying element in the church."
Fox said dialogue is more important to him than unity. But one of the stories that sparked the most dialogue also led the newspaper to a $30 million lawsuit. In that story, published in December 1994, National Catholic Reporter accused Catholic executives at manufacturer Briggs & Stratton in Milwaukee of "moral blindness" and other failings when the company decided to move about 2,000 jobs out of Wisconsin.
Briggs & Stratton sued National Catholic Reporter for libel and privacy invasion. But the case was eventually thrown out of court.
"We do have a libel lawyer who we talk to on a regular basis," Fox said.
Interpretation challenges
The story about the priests abusing nuns ran last March and was based on five reports from religious organizations dating to 1994. In that story, National Catholic Reporter alleged that unnamed priests mostly in Africa, where AIDS is a particular concern molested nuns because they were considered safe partners.
The Vatican issued a response about one week later saying "the problem is known, and is restricted to a geographically limited area."
Fox said the Vatican statement surprised him.
"Certainly I didn't expect that," he said. "But you give up trying to decipher what the Vatican is thinking after awhile."
Interpreting information coming out of the Pope's offices and what that information means to the more than 1 billion Catholics worldwide including 62 million in the United States has always been a challenge for National Catholic Reporter.
One solution for the newspaper was to open a Rome bureau last year.
"There is no police blotter you can go to, no regular press releases or Sunshine Laws," said Roberts, 53. "And there are very few people who are in the position we are to hold the Vatican responsible."
Roberts said the newspaper, which has about 36 employees in Kansas City, correspondencies in Los Angeles and Rome and a half-dozen stringers, supports itself through advertising and subscriptions. The company is doing well financially and has no plans to change course.
"The church has survived the denial of Jesus by Peter," Roberts said. "It can survive a little light on some of the human foibles of a human institution."
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