Catholic News Agency
During his 22 years as spokesman for St. John Paul II, Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Valls became somewhat of a legend in the Vatican – not only for his keen professional abilities and insight into the Pope's mind, but also for his genuine kindness and deep spiritual life.
In a word, most who knew the late Spanish layman, who died earlier this week, have referred to him as a “gentleman” who was elegant, professional, kind and incredibly savvy.
John Allen
When I spoke to Navarro for the last time, I tried to tell him what he had meant to me, and how much he had helped me when I was just starting out. I’m not sure he took it all in, because by that stage in the conversation he was obviously fatigued and drifting in and out.
If he didn’t quite get it, let me say it now: I’m probably not here, writing this appreciation or doing anything else in journalism, had it not been for Joaquin Navarro-Valls. To quote Shakespeare, “Take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.”
New York Times
Navarro, as he was widely known, had little in common with the partisan attack dogs of modern-day political warfare.
“Grace under pressure,” Greg Burke, the Vatican’s current spokesman, wrote on Twitter upon his death. In a subsequent email, Mr. Burke attested to Mr. Navarro-Valls’s storytelling skills: “When talking about John Paul, he could have you hanging on every word.”
But Mr. Navarro-Valls’s influence extended beyond the press office.
In 1994, he led the Holy See’s delegation at a conference in Cairo, where he helped form an alliance of Catholic and Muslim nations to oppose the legal recognition of abortion as a human right. He challenged the Clinton administration’s position on the topic.
National Catholic Reporter
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, who succeeded Navarro-Valls as Vatican press director beginning in 2006, remembered him as a "master in the way he carried out his service."
"Navarro always remained a friend for me, an example of discreet spiritual life, true and profound, fully integrated in his work, a model of dedication at the service of the pope and the church, a master of communications, although for me — as I have already said, but repeat — inimitable," Lombardi said in an editorial published July 6 on Vatican Radio.
Greg Erlandson, director and editor-in-chief of Catholic News Service, covered the Vatican for CNS from 1986-89. He said that as the first lay director of the Vatican press office, Navarro-Valls "was a groundbreaking figure in Vatican communications."
"He raised the level of professionalism at the press office and embodied that professionalism in his relationship with the world's news media. He exemplified the ideal that one could be a fully professional communicator and at the same time be a person of deep faith," Erlandson said in a July 6 statement.
"In this way, he was the perfect collaborator with the pope he so loyally served, St. John Paul II," he said.
Fr. Raymond de Souza, National Catholic Register
Joaquin Navarro-Valls, one of the most unusual figures in Curial history, died Wednesday and was buried Friday in Rome. St. John Paul’s longtime papal spokesman offered a most extraordinary — and successful — service, one that has lessons for today.
Navarro-Valls was a pioneer. His intimate collaboration with John Paul will unlikely be replicated in any other pontificate. John Paul was unusual, in that he entrusted his papacy over long years to a few key people who therefore were enormously influential: Navarro-Valls; his personal secretary, Stanislaw Dziwisz; his prefect of doctrine, Joseph Ratzinger; his vicar for Rome, Camillo Ruini.
Nevertheless, there are lessons for today from Navarro-Valls’ example.
First, a spokesman is only as effective as his principal permits him to be. A spokesman who does not regularly have direct access to the pope will be very limited in his effectiveness. The Vatican press corps must know that the press spokesman has sufficient access to the Holy Father and that his statements do in fact reflect the reality of the situation, and not merely his commentary upon it. When Navarro-Valls clarified something for the press corps, they knew that he was speaking the Holy Father’s mind.
That was not the case after Navarro-Valls retired. His successor, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, was a true gentleman, whose genial manner and generous spirit served the Church well in many difficult moments, but he did not have similar access to either Pope Benedict or Pope Francis. Thus his comments were too often regarded as attempts to spin the events, rather than an authoritative presentation of them.
Second, professional competence matters. It is not essential to have been a journalist to serve as an effective spokesman, but it is necessary to know what journalists need and how they think. That Pope Francis appointed Greg Burke, like Navarro-Valls a veteran journalist, to the post underscores that this lesson has been learned.
Though Navarro-Valls’ principal work was in the Holy See Press Office, he also was a key figure behind the professional training offered to Church communications personnel at the University of the Holy Cross, the Opus Dei university in Rome. Indeed, by sheer force of example, Navarro-Valls led a global shift in the way the Church approached communications. The Holy Cross courses were an institutional expression of it.
