Hearts & Minds: Lessons from the Vatican on handling the most sensitive topic of all

Pope Francis has suffered ‘a respiratory crisis’. He is ‘sitting up, out of bed, working and joking as usual’. His condition is ‘critical’. He is showing signs of kidney failure as well as double pneumonia. The Holy Father remains ‘critical but there is slight improvement’. On it goes, the regular drip-drip of information regarding the Pontiff’s hospitalisation.

Meanwhile, in the Vatican, thousands gather and pray for his recovery. At the same time, audiences flock to see Conclave, a hit film of the season and Oscars contender, about the secretive process following a pope’s death and election of his successor. The cast of the fictional movie duly issue a statement, expressing their worry for him. Life and art are not so much imitating one another as colliding.

Caught in the middle is the comms surrounding a key figure’s health. The Vatican is not especially given to transparency so doubtless, the insatiable demand for ‘news’ is even more difficult to bear. At the centre of it all, too, is a person, whose privacy, wishes and feelings must be respected.

It's difficult, striking the right balance. To say little leads to accusations of cover up and something to hide. To say a lot smacks of intrusion and inevitable claims of deliberate inaccuracy as the medical situation changes. Then there are the visitors, who voice their own opinions as to what they found. And the workers who are hounded for comment and watched for any sign of what may be really occurring. Social media is frantic with speculation.

It was the same in the UK when the Queen was fading; and in other countries when their leaders take ill; likewise, in corporates and other organisations. There is only one policy that can work and that is honest, measured and regular. Honest, based on what the doctors are saying. Measured, without any embellishment or interpretation. Regular, because to miss a bulletin, no matter how innocuous, is to invite rumour. That’s easier said than done, of course, as one minute someone can be on the road to recovery, only to relapse.

What has altered, is that the other option, to say absolutely nothing at all, to adopt total silence, has gone. This is a world in which that approach is no longer acceptable. Once it could have been, and today, there are still some states and institutions that cling to secrecy, although even for them chinks will appear and go viral.

Chris Blackhurst is one of the UK’s foremost business journalists. He was previously Editor of The Independent and City Editor of the Evening Standard.