Dear Blog Readers— On Friday I will be traveling on the Papal Plane to Mexico (with a brief stop in Cuba) for AP Television. The Associated Press will have a four-person team on board. I will be working with Video-Journalist Paolo Santalucia, AP Rome Bureau Chief Nicole Winfield for AP wire and Gregorio Borgia for …
Dear Blog Readers – There never seems to be a dull moment in Rome. I don’t know if it is the weather, the food, the history, the art or the fact that the Pope is here, but all the movers and shakers of the world have a habit of stopping by rather regularly. Over the …
My cell phone rang at 6:27 am last Thursday. It was AP Television Rome’s Senior Producer Maria Grazia Murru. “Can you be on a train for Florence in half an hour. It leaves at 7:05. The prosecutor in the Ashley Olsen murder case is giving a press conference at 10am.” I had been following this …
Dear Blog Readers, Since we are all caught up in the pre-holiday frenzy and surely no one has much time to read blog posts, I will keep this one brief. This week I covered the December 8th opening of the Jubilee Year of Mercy at the Vatican. During this event, Pope Francis pushed open the …
Today I had to cover a press conference on the preparations for the Jubilee of Mercy which starts in Rome on December 8th. It was organized by the Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi in a fabulous room in the Lateran Palace (part of the Saint John the Lateran Complex in Rome). I was working with my colleague …
Last week I had the rare opportunity to dedicate myself for two days to a feature story in Florence, the restoration of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s North Doors on the Florence baptistery and the making of a replica. After becoming discouraged about the current situation in Rome (see last post “Ravishing, Rotten Rome”) it was refreshing to …
The other night I happened to be passing through Piazza del Popolo at dusk as I headed home from work. My mind was spinning around the events of the day: a massive corruption trial in Rome, and more scandals at the Vatican. As I briskly clipped my way over the cobblestones, my thoughts, interspersed with …
Dear Blog Readers, After my lengthy post on the Papal trip to the United States (Hacks in Black: On the Papal Plane with Pope Francis), I am going to keep my post on the Cuba leg short. I want to share some of the photos, especially those taken by my AP photographer colleague Alessandra Tarantino, …
Hopes, Dreams and Humidity with Pope Francis in Cuba Read More »