Spotlight: Vatican Watcher

The day I switched my blogging service from AOL to Blogger, Jacob from Vatican Watcher posted a comment on my site giving me a warm welcome to Blogspot. Since then, he has posted comments every few days, usually to call me back to reality whenever I suggest sending the Second Marine Division into Syria or North Korea.

Vatican Watcher posts the latest statements, homilies, apostolic exhortations, and so forth, from the Vatican and adds just enough commentary to let us know what the specific relevance of the news is. For non-Catholics visiting his sight, he isn't into apologetics so much as helping the reader understand the meaning and relevance of what goes on in Rome.

He is working with three important pieces of news right now. One is his take on the forced resignation of Father Thomas Reese from the Jesuit magazine, America, here and here. A second story is his coverage of the possible new Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. He treats it here and here. The reason the story is important is because that is the post just vacated by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he became the new pontiff. Whoever gets Benedict XVI's old post will become both a very powerful official in the Vatican and likely come into consideration as the next pope when B16 passes away. A third story is his opinion on B16's decision to waive the five year waiting period before considering JPII's cause for sainthood.

All good stuff.