Constance/Rome (gro) Wholemeal bread from the Hohenhausgasse in Constance is always highly welcome at the Piazza di Spagna in Rome. In the past, when Christa Langen-Peduto (photo: Hella Wolff-Seybold) visited the “Südkurier” at Lake Constance at least once a year to exchange ideas with Ernst Hebeker and other colleagues from the political editorial department, she always took a good load of Regin bread with her to the Eternal City. This could increase at the moment. Because Christa Langen-Peduto, who reported for the “Südkurier”, one of the big newspapers in the south of Germany, for over 20 years from the Vatican and from the rest of Italy, is currently increasingly drawing attention to such: she has written the text for an exciting book. It’s called “In the Shadow of the Popes” and portrays the private secretaries of seven Catholic church leaders since Pius XII. (died 1958) to Pope Francis, the current pope.
Unique insight into the inside of the Vatican.
For her book, the former Italy correspondent, who reports not only for the “Südkurier” but also for the “Westdeutsche Allgenmeine Zeitung” (WAZ) or the “Augsburger Allgemeine” as well as for smaller papers such as the “Mindelheimer Zeitung” personally met and interviewed all still living private secretaries of popes. The book is richly illustrated with excellent photos by Josef Albert Slominski, 79, the world’s only photographer who has always had unrestricted access to the popes and their private surroundings. Interviews, reports and pictures, so it is said in the relevant reviews, conveyed a “unique, exciting insight into the center of the Vatican”.
The private side of high dignitaries.
mi, as the photographer Josef Albert Slominski is called in short form in the Vatican, have accompanied the popes of recent years on their travels around the world, also on behalf of the “Osservatore Romano”, the official organ of the Vatican. With the pictures and reportages, some of which also appeared in the “New York Times”, Christa Langen-Peduto and Slomi , both of whom are now working as freelance journalists, provide very personal, even intimate insights into the lives of the popes and their private secretaries, their closest confidants.
Shortly before the 100th birthday.
In May of this year, Christa Langen-Peduto met Cardinal Loris Francesco Capovilla, now deceased, who dedicated the cardinal honor to “his” pope, John XXII, still at the age of 100, which Pope Francis bestowed upon him. It seems all the more curious that Reinhold Marx, the popular Munich cardinal who wrote the foreword to Christa Langen-Peduto’s and Slomi’s book, only mentions the photographer, but forgets the former Italy correspondent. That can happen to a busy pastor and church politician in a hurry. Curiouser is in any case that indeed the WAZ, the “Augsburger Allgemeine” and also the “Mindelheimer Zeitung” report about the new book, with no line however the “Südkurier”. But that can still come. Incidentally, the book about the private secretaries of the popes is ideal as a belated Christmas gift or as a surprise gift for the New Year.