Pope lauds Vatican’s newspaper on 150^th anniversary

(July 01, 2011) As the Vatican newspaper ”L'Osservatore Romano” marked its 150th anniversary on Friday, Pope Benedict XVI blessed it, praising its service to the truth. In a message addressed to Giovanni Maria Vian, editor-in-chief of the daily, the Pope said that "150 years are truly a considerable length of time for a daily newspaper, a long and important journey rich in joys, difficulties, hard work, satisfaction and grace." The first issue of L'Osservatore was published on July 1, 1861. The Pontiff who marked 60 years of his own priesthood on Wednesday stressed the responsibility of a daily which has made known the teaching of the popes for a century and a half and which is one of the privileged instruments at the service of the Holy See and of the Church. The German Pontiff spoke of the interesting history of the newspaper: its establishment as a private initiative with the support of the papal government, its development when in 1870 the Church's temporal power ended, its growth in prestige when the Holy See acquired ownership of it 15 years later, and its courageous role throughout the various tragedies of the 20th century. Today the newspaper is published in various languages around the world, including in southern India’s Malayalam language since 2008, the first to be printed entirely in non-Latin characters in Kerala state.