For no apparent reason, the Vatican announced that it had canceled the live broadcast of President Joe Biden’s meeting with Pope Francis.
Washington Post reports that the footage showed President Obama arriving in his motorcade. The broadcast then ended. However, there will be “edited” footage given to specific media outlets later:
On Thursday, the Vatican abruptly cancelled the live broadcast of President Joe Biden and Pope Francis. This is the latest limitation on media coverage about the Holy See.
The Vatican press office provided no explanation for why the live broadcast of Biden’s visit had been trimmed to cover just the arrival of the president’s motorcade in the courtyard of the Apostolic Palace, where a Vatican monsignor will greet him.
Cancelled was any live coverage of Biden actually greeting Francis in the palace Throne Room, as well as the live footage of the two men sitting down to begin their private talks in Francis’ library, at which time the cameras normally would have stopped running.
According to the Vatican, it will provide edited footage after the event to accredited media.
According to the Associated Press, this would have been an important moment due to the fact that the Vatican hasn’t allowed for independent photographers or journalists to attend papal audiences since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and continues to use this as the reason it has continued to keep media out.
Speculation as to why has begun circulating amongst the people, with some surmising that this was likely a request from Biden’s handlers to save Biden and the Democrat party any further embarrassment from Biden’s continued inability to censor himself from what should be private knowledge or prevent himself from saying something embarrassing.
These have not been verified.
Biden is only the second Catholic president who has served in office. However, many Catholic officials have been critical of Biden’s stances regarding abortion. The Pope himself has called the act “murder.” Bishops from the U.S. are due to meet in a few weeks for their annual fall convention with one of the agenda items being the discussion of Biden’s stances on abortion and how his support for it should disqualify him from receiving communion.
The AP has said that the bishops will likely not mention Biden by name but issue a strong “rebuke” regardless. While the Pope has said that abortion is murder, he also issued a statement after hearing about the bishop’s plans and said that they should be pastors, not politicians.
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