Both uniformed and plainclothes police started to ask people in the square to stay back, creating an open space corridor for what would be the motorcade of the head of Vietnam’s communist party following his visit to the Pope.

I quickly took these photos with my cell phone – the escort vehicles as they parked near the Arch of the Bells (police cars are not allowed inside Vatican City, though technically the square is the Vatican), and then the official cars as they left the Vatican.

BENEDICT XVI RECEIVES SECRETARY GENERAL OF VIETNAM’S COMMUNIST PARTY

The Holy See Press Office issued a very brief communique on a very important meeting this morning between Pope Benedict and Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the central committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam. It noted that, following the audience with the Pope, Trong and his entourage met with Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, accompanied by Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, secretary for Relations with States.

“This is the first time,” said the Vatican communiqué, “that a general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam has met with the Supreme Pontiff and other administrators of the Secretariat of State. During the course of cordial discussions, topics of interest to Vietnam and the Holy See were covered, expressing the hope that some pending situations may be resolved and that the existing fruitful cooperation may be strengthened.”

AsiaNews reported that, “Trong was received with full protocol - on arrival he was greeted in the courtyard of San Damaso by the prefect of the Pontifical Household, (Archbishop) Georg Gaenswein, the Pope came to greet him in the throne room and a Vatican press release describes talks with Pope Benedict XVI, and then with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State and Abp. Dominique Mamberti, Secretary for Relations with States, as ‘friendly’.”

The Vatican statement, said AsiaNews, “speaks of ‘the hope that some pending situations may be resolved and that the existing fruitful cooperation may be strengthened’.

”If the ‘pending situations’ are reminiscent of the tensions between the Church and the authorities in Vietnam, the ‘fruitful cooperation’ refers to the relations - not diplomatic - launched with the visit of Prime Minister Nguye'n Tan Dung to the Vatican, January 25, 2007. That meeting, came after more than 20 visits carried out since 1973 to Vietnam by Vatican delegations at various levels, which opened the possibility for the Holy See to appoint a ‘papal representative’, although non-resident, after the interruption of diplomatic relations following the fall of Saigon in 1975.”

AsiaNews noted that “the appointment of the Pope's representative, Abp. Leopoldo Girelli was accompanied by the possibility of regularizing the situation of the 26 dioceses of the country. After decades of hardship and vetoes, since 2008 the Holy See has appointed seven bishops and the bishops have ordained hundreds of priests, steps which had previously been fraught with difficulties. Msgr. Girelli was able to visit all 26 dioceses in the country, meeting thousands of priests and hundreds of thousands of faithful.”

Since February 2009, there has been a joint Vietnam-Vatican working group to study the possibility of establishing diplomatic relations.

CHANGES AT THE TOP IN VATICAN COMMUNICATIONS OFFICES

The Vatican announced today that Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, who has led the Vatican television center since 2001, Vatican Radio since 2005 and the Holy See Press Office since 2006, is leaving CTV and will be replaced as director by Msgr. Dario Edoardo Viganò, a professor, lecturer and expert in cinema. Fr. Lombardi remains as head of Vatican Radio and the press office.

Fr. Lombardi was named program director at the radio in 1991 and general director in 2005. In 2001 he was appointed general director of the CTV. In July 2006 the Holy Father named him director of the Vatican Press Office

In addition, it was announced today that Angelo Scelzo, a layman and up to now under-secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, will become the vice director for media accreditation at the Holy See Press Office. He will be working closely with press office vice director, Fr. Ciro Benedettini, a Passionist priest.

This appointment is seen as part of a streamlining process within the Vatican’s world of communications. Scelzo’s job at the council was to accredit audio-visual media for papal events or specials such as documentaries. Members of the print media were accredited to cover these events through the press office, and for years people wondered why all media accreditation was not handled through a single office, namely, the press office.

The overlapping created not a few problems over the years but the Vatican now seems to be on the right track by deciding to handle all accreditations at the press office.

In June 2012, the Vatican took another step to in the communications department by creating a new office – that of senior communication advisor to the Vatican's Secretariat of State – and naming American Greg Burke as its first occupant.

At that time, Fr. Lombardi said, "The goal of this new figure will be to contribute to integrating attention to communication issues within the Secretariat of State and handling relations with the press office and other institutions in charge of communication within the Holy See.”

Burke, 52, a native of St. Louis and member of Opus Dei, was the Fox News Rome-based correspondent for the previous 10 years. He reports to the Vatican undersecretary of state and the official who oversees Vatican communications in the secretariat.

Burke’s appointment came at a time when the Vatican was greatly in need of good PR, given a number of blunders in recent years that have tarnished the image of Pope Benedict as a capable administrator fully in charge of the Church’s government, including the embarassing release of private internal documents that became part of a scandal known as “Vatileaks.”

In an early interview, Burke said he had been offered the job twice before, but accepted the third time around, because "This is an opportunity and challenge that I'm not going to get again." Before joining Fox News, Burke worked for Time Magazine and also wrote at one point for several years for the National Catholic Register.

Msgr. Viganò, the new head of Vatican TV, is a professor of communication studies and dean of the Pastoral Institute “Redemptor Hominis” at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. He lectures in “Audio-visual languages and market” and “Theory and Techniques of Cinema” at the LUISS "Guido Carli" University of Rome where he is also a member of the directing committee for a research center for Media and Communication Studies.

Msgr. Viganò is an official of several foundations and entities associated with the world of cinema, including the Italian National Commission of Evaluating Films of the Italian Episcopal Conference. He is also the author of numerous studies dedicated to the analysis of the relationship between the media and the Catholic Church, with particular attention being paid to the cinema.

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