Rome, 11 October 2011. Italian journalist Antonio Gaspari has been named the new Editorial Coordinator of the Zenit news organization.

Alberto Ramirez, Zenit executive director said in a letter to readers that Gaspari “has been a member of the Zenit team since the beginning and, with his vast curriculum and experience, he will guarantee the quality of the service and guide it through the new challenges of the future.”

In addition to working with Zenit, Gaspari, born in 1955, has worked as a correspondent for Inside the Vatican and also Avvenire, L´Osservatore Romano, Mondo e Missione, Catholic World Report and The National Catholic Register. He has written several investigative books on topics including demography, bioethics, the Green Movement and pro-life issues.  Over a 10-year period, he researched and produced books, articles and television programs about Pope Pius XII and his defense of the Jews during WWII.

Gaspari said he is “honored and proud to have been chosen to lead the international news service of ZENIT.  “I humbly put myself at the service of positive communication,” he said.  “Our daily service will strive to discover and write about all that is true, good and beautiful in the life of the Church.  Allow me to ask for your prayers so that Our Lord continue to illuminate our minds and our hearts.”

Fr. Andreas Schoggl, LC, spokesperson of the Legionaries of Christ in Rome, discussed the involvement of the Legion with the Zenit news organization.  He said this is an opportune time to offer a better and more transparent explanation about the involvement of the Legionaries of Christ with Zenit to its readers.

“We see a need to do so because Zenit’s stress on journalistic independence might have caused people to think that Zenit was just a private initiative of Catholic journalists,” said Fr. Schoggl.
He said Zenit was started by the Legionaries of Christ, and that the religious order has always been involved in Zenit’s major strategic decisions, in legal and corporate issues, and also with financial support, mainly before Zenit reached a point where the readers’ donations covered most of the expenses. 

Zenit journalists and editors always published their articles on their own responsibility, without being reviewed by the Legion of Christ, according to Schoggl. “The editorial independence is a very important aspect of Zenit,” he said.

Always open to ‘anything which is Catholic,’ Zenit has taken a special interest in the Pope, Bishops, religious congregations and new movements in the Church. “The Legionaries have been promoters of this approach and will guarantee that Zenit continues to be an agency at the service of the whole Church,” said Fr. Schoggl.

He explained that Zenit was started “to meet the needs of Catholics looking for free, fast and accurate information about the Church on the Internet,” and that the organization grew very rapidly. “In its early days, priests and religious of our congregation were teaming up with our former executive editor Jesús Colina, helping out as writers, editors, translators and even as improvised web technicians. Later on, Zenit was able to hire more lay employees who took over almost all the staff positions in the agency, but the Legionaries were still the publisher of the agency and part of the executive council.”

The recent decision concerning the former executive editor who left Zenit after having started two independent agencies --H2O News and Aleteia -- was taken in order to improve the functioning and service of the agency itself, said Fr. Schoggl. 

“It was not part of a policy change or a change in the editorial direction of Zenit,” he clarified.
Fr. Schoggl confirmed that some Zenit editors are leaving the agency in order to continue to cooperate with Colina in the future in his new ventures. Nevertheless, the Legionaries are confident that the executive director Alberto Ramírez and Antonio Gaspari as the new editorial coordinator will be able to guide the Zenit team at the service of Catholic communication.