Rome - The criticism levelled this morning by Austen Ivereigh at Pope Leo XIV says nothing about the Pope’s gesture. It says a great deal, instead, about the method – and the standard – of a certain brand of journalism that for years built careers, reputations and income around the figure of Pope Francis, and that now, suddenly cut off from access, is trying to stay relevant by attacking the new Pontiff with false claims and ideological distortions.
As is well known, this morning Leo XIV received monks and nuns who, according to an ancient and well-documented tradition, brought with them the lambs blessed on the feast of St Agnes. Lambs that are not killed, not mistreated, not paraded as props: they are raised, shorn, and their wool is later used to make the pallia for metropolitan archbishops. This is an ecclesial, symbolic act, deeply rooted in the tradition of the Church.
It is a tradition that was observed in the early years of Francis’s pontificate and later set aside. Not for ethical reasons – because there is no ethical issue in that rite – but simply because these things did not interest Francis. Signs, rituals and liturgical tradition were not central to his vision of governance. What mattered to him was personal loyalty. And when that loyalty failed, bishops were removed with little hesitation, canon law included.
It is worth restating this, since some today pretend to be discovering it for the first time: the lambs are shorn with full respect for the animal; shearing is a relief, not a source of suffering. Because they are very small, they are presented to the Pope lying in a basket. The videos released show calm, serene animals, certainly not “terrified” as Ivereigh claims. This is not a matter of opinion: it is a simply false statement.
And this is where the misrepresentation becomes obvious. Ivereigh invokes the so-called “era of Laudato si’” to suggest that Leo XIV’s gesture contradicts Pope Francis’s encyclical. The problem is that there is nothing in the encyclical that can be used against what happened this morning. Nothing at all.
On the contrary, Laudato si’ warns against an ideology that reduces creatures to objects, but it explicitly rejects a sentimental and ideological view of nature. Pope Francis writes that “every creature has its own value”, yet he places that value within an ordered relationship between humanity, creation and God – not within an animal-rights caricature. He also notes that St Francis of Assisi called creatures brothers and sisters without thereby denying the symbolic and responsible use of animals in human and ecclesial life.
Using the words of a dead Pope to attack the reigning Pope is not an act of fidelity to Laudato si’. It is a cynical and dishonest manoeuvre, and it exposes the real sore point: Ivereigh is no longer invited, he no longer receives off-the-record briefings, and his sources – after Francis’s death – have left the Vatican. With the season of confidences and authorised biographies over, all that remains is the sideways attack, dressed up as ethical concern.
It is no coincidence that in the Vatican Austen Ivereigh has acquired the nickname Mrs Doubtfire. Not only because of a certain physical resemblance, but because these performances look less like the work of a serious correspondent and more like a clumsy act, better suited to a nanny in disguise than to a journalist claiming to lecture others on morality, the Church, and even encyclicals he plainly has not understood – or is deliberately distorting.
The truth is simple and fits on one line: the problem is not the lambs; the problem is the loss of access to power. And when access ends, for some journalists, clarity of judgement ends with it.
A.T.
Silere non possum
