Higgins recalls the general lack of transparency and openness of the Vatican to the world’s press and the role of a Diarmuid Martin, then a monsignor working in the Vatican.
“At the first evening press briefing on the opening day of the synod, we were introduced to a convivial Dublin monsignor, Diarmuid Martin, who had a clear penchant for wordy summaries. It was clear he liked his job never so more than when given a reprieve by a tired press corps from answering their importunate questions. He wanted us, implored us, to be satisfied with the bulletins at hand. He read the notes that he had taken of the eight-minute interventions delivered by the synod fathers that morning, a summarized recitation made necessary by the Vatican’s reluctance to release the prepared texts.”
Higgins goes on to praise Diarmuid Martin. “But prelates and journalists can change, as I discovered with Martin. The once-effervescent evader in time became a staunch advocate of transparency and full communication. Dublin changed him.”
He continues: “Attached to various bodies in Geneva and elsewhere on human rights issues, Martin was eventually appointed archbishop of Dublin at a particularly gruesome time for the Irish Church.
Higgins praises the efforts of Archbishop Martin in Dublin – “Martin’s response was very different from all his living predecessors. He opened the files of the retired auxiliary bishops who had either been tainted by scandal or who were inept, or disciplined priests who were legitimately accused, and acted with such speed and impartiality that many came to see him as a ruthless scourge who had little time for sensitive pastoral attention.”
“No longer a Vatican media apparatchik but a shepherd struggling to restore a modicum of credibile authority to the bedraggled, and sometimes disgraced, Irish hierarchy, Martin came to prize what he had earlier feared: candor and openness.”
A Synod Diary is published by Paulist Press.