From Trustee Journalism to Embedded Journalism: The News Embargo Break of Pope Francis’ Laudato si’

Covering religious news requires careful attention, because it blends the issues related to the Institution (the Pope and his documents) with topics related to people’s faith and values. Therefore, Vatican journalists (“Vaticanists”) are forced to respect strict rules, as for example the news embargo. The paper aims to aims to understand in which way the practice of embargo in Vatican journalism is consistent with a trustee model whose “principal” is represented by citizens. In order to do so, the paper focuses on a recent and very significant case of religious news embargo break: the publication of a draft of the Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’, three days before the established official presentation. From a methodological point of view, we carried out a qualitative media content analysis on Italian newspapers, and qualitative interviews to key informants, selected among Italian journalists. The researches show that Vatican journalism can be considered as an embedded journalism, concerning the critical ethical values nonetheless appear to be reversed. It appears to be a trustee journalism when its principals are represented by believers, but probably not when they consist of citizens.