Lenten campaign 2026
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Our readers have likely heard of the death of John Allen on January 22, just days after his 61st birthday.
If you follow Catholic news in English through any outlet, you've seen the news of his death -- because whether or not the individual journalists working in these organizations knew him personally (and many did!), they were affected by the mark he's made in the last nearly three decades for all of us in this line of work.
Our own founder here at Aleteia, Jesús Colina, knew him in Rome over the course of his long and impressive career.
Colina shared:
What inspired me most about John was his genuine pursuit of truth, even to the point of changing his mind and issuing a public retraction. Shortly after arriving in Rome, he published 'Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican’s Enforcer of the Faith' (2001), portraying Ratzinger as a rigid 'grand inquisitor.'
However, through daily coverage of the Vatican, Allen discovered a gentle, humble, and courteous intellectual — not a 'watchdog.' Following the 2005 election (of Ratzinger as Pope), Allen courageously acknowledged his earlier work was one-sided.
This evolution gave him immense credibility. He risked his professional standing to serve the truth, and that will forever be etched in my heart as his greatest gift.
I don't have anything to add to this and the many other beautiful tributes that have already been written, with insight from both Catholic and secular news agencies.
You can read some of these here: Vatican News; OSV; National Catholic Reporter; National Catholic Register; America; Angelus; and his own Crux, as well as the testimony from his wife, also a journalist.
What my colleague at The Pillar said seems poignant and true:
[H]is death is a reminder that ever-looming mortality is what any of our coverage about Vatican politics or papal tea leaves is really about: A religion which reminds us that we will die, and that we need each of us a savior, and that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
But today, on this feast of St. Francis de Sales, patron of journalists, it seems to me that the only thing we could add to the conversation by way of tribute is another invitation to prayer, in communion with the saints of heaven.
There are a handful of men and women recognized by the Church who found their holiness in daily work similar to ours and John's, and we rest in the certain hope that he is now "catching up on the news," so to speak, with them.
~
Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.Mary, Mother of the Word-made-Flesh, pray for us.
St. Paul, great proclaimer of the Truth, pray for us.
St. Isidore of Seville, patron of the internet, pray for us.
St. Francis de Sales, pray for us.
St. Oscar Romero, radio broadcaster and defender of Truth, pray for us.
St. Titus, who defended the free press and was killed by Nazis, pray for us.
St. Maximilian Kolbe, founder of a monthly magazine and martyr, pray for us.
Blessed Manuel Lozano Garrido, who worked tirelessly as a journalist despite physical suffering, pray for us.
Venerable Fulton Sheen, pray for us.
Servant of God Dorothy Day, pray for us.Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon him.May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
