Another Vatican PR blunder: cardinals' bios from Wikipedia

January 09, 2012

In another embarrassing public-relations gaffe, when Pope Benedict XVI named 22 new cardinals, the Vatican released short biographies of the prelates that had been taken verbatim from Wikipedia without attribution.

Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican press office, acknowledged that the posting of the Wikipedia biographies on the Vatican’s Italian-language web page had been a mistake, which he attributed to haste. The “unofficial” biographies were subsequently replaced by the Vatican’s own “official” biographies, he said.

The Wikipedia biographies that were temporarily posted on the Vatican’s site included some odd comments, describing some of the newly named cardinals as “conservative” insofar as they upheld normal Church teachings, and identifying them as “Catholic” archbishops.

 

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Further information:

• Vatican uses Wikipedia to compile cardinals' biographies (Guardian)