Vatican should not prosecute journalists

As Pope Francis tours Africa he is bound to point out that one of the major scourges afflicting people across the continent, alongside disease, poverty and war, is corruption. And if he knows what he is talking about, as he surely does, he will be aware that an energetic free press is an invaluable ally in combating this pernicious blight. Yet the Holy See is in the process of prosecuting representatives of the free press for publishing leaked documents which expose corruption within the Vatican itself. How does the Pope escape a charge of double standards, which his enemies are sure to lay?

He is entitled to say, as all governments which are leaked against in the media would argue, that trust is an essential requirement in any organisation, and trust is undermined when journalists publish leaked documents. But that understandable irritation which all governments experience from time to time has to be set against the far more fundamental principle of freedom of the press. That is why, in any nation where the rule of law is respected, press freedom is guaranteed. And that is the freedom not just to publish stories the powers-that-be approve of, but far more fundamentally, the freedom to publish stories they do not.

Press freedom is an untidy concept; it does not fit neatly into a well-ordered world. It assumes that there are those prepared to sail to the edge of the law, or even cross it where necessary, in order to tell people things they ought to know. The protection of liberty always needs such people, without whom there would have been no Watergate which deposed Richard Nixon, no Pentagon Papers which revealed the lies and deceptions behind the Vietnam War, no happy ending to the Dreyfus affair, no Westminster parliamentary expenses exposé. They were all painful, they all involved some transgression of rules and codes designed to protect official confidentiality. But they were all necessary. They advanced the common good.

Inspect the jails across the world, and wherever journalists are detained in them, that country is tyrannical. Indeed it is the acid test. Does the Holy See really want to be seen to be counted alongside such benighted regimes? The one thing that is certain about them is that they are corrupt. Suppression of freedom of speech and misappropriation of funds for private purposes invariably go together. This is not to deny the Vatican’s right to expect those it employs to behave honourably, and act accordingly when they do not. But for the sake of the greater good and to preserve the reputation of the Catholic Church all over the world, the prosecution of journalists by the Holy See must cease forthwith.