An Analysis of News based on the Pope

This week, I looked at the issues pertaining to the Pope’s resignation in order to analyze three different approaches to the story. The starting point was a story written in the Ottawa Herald entitled “Pope’s unusual exit providing lessons on faith, papal transition”. This entire story is written from the viewpoint of Sacred Heart, a private school in Ottawa. Although they did a nice job of presenting the local aspect of the story, I felt that in comparison to the other sources that I looked at, they really missed a lot of facts.

Another issue that I found with the local presentation of the story was that they didn’t offer up a whole lot of information for why the Pope is resigning, besides what he has state (that he is ill). This presents issues because that, in addition to the fact that the article appears somewhat one-sided because only the administrators at Sacred Heart were interviewed, leads to questioning of their information. They didn’t really cover any of the scandal or issues surrounding the whole ordeal. The main take was that the Pope’s resignation will provide a learning experience for the students as the next Pope is chosen.

The second article I read was on the Washington Post’s website and covered the article from a national and international level. It is entitled “Pope Benedict XVI to resign, citing age and waning energy” and discusses many of the different reasons for the Pope’s resignation, in addition to some of the details of his Papacy. Although this clearly lacked the local angle, I found it to be much more informative about what really is going on. It explained the issues with one of the Pope’s butler who has been telling people that there have been scandals, and also further discusses the Pope’s failing health, citing it as a legitimate reason for the Pope’s resignation.

The last article was entitled “‘Constant Drumbeat’ Sped the Pope’s Exit” and was found on the New York Times’ website. It was fairly similar to the take that the Washington Post took—it focused on detail and gave more reasons than just failing health for his resignation. I liked this article the most because I felt that it offered the most detail without being biased or trying to tell readers exactly what happened. It had all of the details about scandals that the previous article did, but also added in information about another sex scandal that was caused by a Reverend in Mexico that the Pope seemed to ignore initially, as well as his struggle to relate with Islam. However, they also provided the view that the Catholic Church view’s the Pope’s resignation as an act of humility.