Rorate Caeli

Follow-up on Sigrid Spath - and a note on style


We have received confirmation that the source for the Vatican Radio report on the non-conversion of Vatican German-language translator Sigrid Spath was... none other than Sigrid Spath herself. She was the one who revealed the information to Vatican Radio journalist and author Gudrun Sailer, in a book called Frauen im Vatikan (Women in the Vatican), published in 2008 and dedicated to portraits of women working in the Vatican. The exact same story was told by Spath to Sailer and is available on page 91 of the book.

Since the Vatican Radio story is written by "GS" (those responsible for Vatican Radio items are usually identified in the bottom, after "RV", for Radio Vaticana, and the date of the item), it is quite likely that the Sunday report which we translated in part was written by the book author herself. If there are any doubts on the veracity of the story, one may just find out about it from Sailer herself.
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In a subforum of a large Catholic forum that bills itself as dedicated to Traditional Catholicism, this blog  -- which, through no merit of ours, but due only to the benevolence of our readers, is one of the most widely read exclusively Traditional Catholic pages on the web -- was characterized as "nasty" for our habit of interchangeably using papal names and surnames, in the age-old Italian style.

Nothing could be nastier, then, than the inscription right in the middle of the façade of the Vatican Basilica, in which is present the nasty surname of Paul V BORGHESE (nasty!), the pontiff who completed the new St. Peter's.


Even nastier is the name of the theological studies' Vatican foundation established by Benedict XVI himself, Fondazione Vaticana Joseph Ratzinger - Benedetto XVI, known simply as the Ratzinger Foundation that awards the Ratzinger Prize. Really, those people in the Vatican are quite nasty... We have adopted this style (in part to avoid being repetitive in the same post) since the beginning of the blog, and we use it from Pope Lambertini to the Holy Pope Sarto with no evil intent of any sort.