Vatican: Fr. Lombardi leaves Vatican Radio

Fr. Federico Lombardi, S. J. (on the picture), resigned from his appointment as head of Vatican Radio at the end of February 2016. He will not be replaced, because as indicated in a note from the Secretariat for Communications republished by iMedia on February 22, 2016, the radio station will be incorporated into a single dicastery: the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. It will also include the Vatican Press Office, the Vatican Internet Service, the Vatican Television Centre, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican printing office, the Vatican photographic service, and the Vatican publishing house.

Fr. Lombardi, who was also the head of the Vatican Television Centre from 2001 to 2013, took over the “Pope’s Radio” in 2005. He spent the previous 15 years as director of programming.

On February 24, 2016, in a radio broadcast held to bid him farewell, the Italian Jesuit warned that “it must not be assumed that one can do more and better by investing fewer resources.” In a barely veiled message to the Secretariat for Communications, directed by Bishop Dario Edoardo Viganò, the religious expressed hope that the reform of Vatican media would not forget to “take the poor into account”: “In the DNA of Vatican Radio (…) has always been the service of oppressed Christians, of the poor, of minorities in difficulty, rather than absolute subjection to the imperative of optimizing the audience.”

Fr. Federico Lombardi, aged 73, currently remains at the head of the Vatican Press Office, where he has been since July 2006.

(Sources: kipa-apic.ch – iMedia – DICI no. 332, 11/03/16)

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