Nun juggled media, cardinals in Rome

Nearly every telephone call that Sister Mary Ann Walsh, RSM, got during the first three weeks of April began with, "Sister, I'm sorry to bother you at this hour, but...."

In her role as deputy director for media relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Sister Mary Ann spent much of the month in Rome, coordinating media coverage of Pope John Paul II's funeral, the conclave that elected Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as his successor and his investiture as Pope Benedict XVI.

"The media were very enthusiastic," she said. "CNN is on 24/7, and they're constantly scrambling for people to put on" as guests. At one point, she recalled telling a colleague wryly, "If we could get a dog who said, 'Ratzinger patted my head,' I could have sold it to CNN."

Long hours

Sister Mary Ann flew to Rome on April 3, the day after Pope John Paul's death, and set up a press office at the North American College near the Vatican. She immediately began setting up interviews between various media outlets and the cardinals who were gathering in Rome.

Several things made her work a challenge. She had to work with TV and radio stations, newspapers, and magazines from all over the U.S., all of whom had different deadlines for publication. Some outlets wanted individual interviews with cardinals or other officials; others wanted group interviews. A few, including Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball," interviewed Sister Mary Ann herself.

"American media are easy to deal with," she told The Evangelist. "They're much more civilized than [reporters from] other countries. I've had Italian media use my head as a tripod: 'Don't move; just stand there!'"

Watching TV

Sister Mary Ann was so busy juggling requests that while Pope John Paul's funeral was celebrated just steps from her door, she had to watch it on TV in her office.

Missing the event made her determined to attend the Mass that opened the conclave to elect a new pope. "Things were a little calmer at that point," she noted.

The lull between John Paul's funeral and the conclave to elect his successor led to some laughs. Sister Mary Ann recalled a frazzled reporter asking her if Pope John Paul was going to be "buried in a closed coffin."

"I just said, 'I believe so,'" she remembered, adding: "The poor thing; I wondered how long he'd been working!"

Waiting for news

Waiting for the conclave of cardinals to announce the name of the 265th pope was when excitement -- and Sister Mary Ann's work in Rome -- reached a fever pitch. She was trying to arrange interviews with cardinals without knowing when a decision would be made or when they would be available.

In addition, like everyone else, she had no advance notice of who the new pope would be. "I had no inkling," she said. "The Italian newspapers were saying Cardinal Ratzinger had 50 votes right from the start, but the Italians will frequently leak things to the media to see how they're going to play."

The Italian newspapers, she added, were also claiming that a cardinal with Parkinson's disease was a front-runner to become pope, which was highly unlikely, given John Paul's struggle with the illness.

Pins and needles

On April 19, the day Benedict XVI was elected, Sister Mary Ann was nervous.

"I remember going to the chapel [at the North American College] and praying to the Lord of journalists and the Lord of technicians" to work out the logistics of the event, she said, laughing.

Then she went to St. Peter's Square to watch the chimney of the Sistine Chapel and was there at 5:49 p.m. when white smoke appeared. One of her most poignant memories of her trip, she said, was the sight of thousands of people appearing seemingly out of nowhere and flooding into St. Peter's Square at the sight of the smoke.

"You hear about a 'sea of people' -- you understood what that really meant," she said. "But there was such peace, happiness, excitement."

Winding down

After the announcement of a new pontiff, Sister Mary Ann arranged for Cardinal Edward Egan of the New York Archdiocese to speak to the press for an hour, then for Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia to do several interviews, including one for "Nightline."

After that, the media presence in Rome began to subside. Sister Mary Ann was able to attend Pope Benedict's first Mass, perched on one section of the colonnade surrounding St. Peter's Square, high above the crowd.

By April 26, she was headed home to Washington, D.C. Before she left Rome, she wrote to a friend: "I'm sore, I'm tired and I'm completely satisfied."

"It was just wonderful," she told The Evangelist. "The things I'll always remember are the huge crowds of people -- people lined up to see the body [of Pope John Paul]; with the announcement of the white smoke, people pouring down the street into St. Peter's Square. They had millions of people, and they were able to handle it. And Benedict XVI on the balcony [making his first appearance]: I'm going to remember that forever."

(A native of the Albany Diocese, Sister Mary Ann was a staff writer for The Evangelist in the 1970s and '80s.)

(5/05/05)