THE SCOOP ON “POPE’S BRAIN TUMOR”
TRIGGERED BY A NAME
In October this year, when QN—Quotidiano Nazionale—an online newspaper, published the stunning headline: Pope Francis has a brain tumor, the news immediately assumed the character of a veritable scoop, worthy of envy in newsrooms around the world.
Basking in the momentous upshot of this ‘earth-shaker,’ the publication proceeded to unravel its mysteries with delicate cunning by hinting that the pope was attended to by Takanori Fukushima, a renowned Japanese neurosurgeon, who had recently visited the Vatican for consultation and treatment. The ‘scoop,’ needless to say, caused the media to buzz with excitement and sent Vatican officials on a wild scramble, not only to deny the verity of the claim, but also to douse the controversial flame it had generated. It soon emerged that there was more to the story than meets the eye. The Vatican’s denial followed close on the heels of an exposé published by the Holy See’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, in which the original photograph of the surgeon’s meeting with the pope was revealed to be a picture taken in the company of several people in St. Peter’s Square, which contrasted with the version published by the surgeon on his blog in which he appeared to have met the pope alone.
No sooner had the original photo been published than the Japanese surgeon removed
the 'touched' version from his blog, casting a dark shadow over the whole affair. The strange development sparked conspiracy theories. Many pundits pointed accusing fingers at some cardinals known to oppose the pope’s attempt to reform the church. One of them even went a step further. The online publication, infiltrato.it, quoted a former Italian journalist and fixer, Luigi Bisignani, as hinting that the ‘scoop’ was engineered by Opus Dei to discredit the pope as part of an ongoing rivalry between Opus Dei and the Jesuits, which Pope Francis belongs to.
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| Papal Audience |
Now it has emerged that the story was triggered by an uncanny coincidence. Takanori Fukushima, the Japanese neurosurgeon at the center of the story, in an interview at the Moriyama Memorial Hospital in Tokyo with the Italian news agency, ANSA, said the scoop was bogus. “They should have consulted me before publishing it,” he was reported as saying. “I’m not quite sure what went on behind the scenes, I guess there are some political issues in the Vatican or between cardinals, but I can assure you that the report did not depict the truth.” Though he could not put a finger on how the report came about, he however proffered a theory. “I was told that there was a 78 year-old patient in one of the hospitals where I operate who had a brain tumor. The patient was named Giorgio Mario Bergoglio and not only did he have the same middle and surname as the pope he had the same age as well.”
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| Fukushima with pope (photo-shopped) |
“I think that was the origin of the rumor, totally wrong,” Fukushima reportedly said, explaining that he visited the Vatican twice, first in October 2014 and again in February 2015, but “not for a consultation.” According to ANSA, his first visit was in the company of Luciano Mastronardi, head physician at San Filippo Neri Hospital in Rome, at a general audience with the pontiff. “I was only able to say ‘I am a Japanese neurosurgeon, best wishes, Pope Francis,’ that was all.”
About the controversial photo-shopped picture from his second visit (which was removed from his blog after the ‘scoop’), he said he did it to protect the privacy of the other people in the picture. “There was a bishop from Taiwan, one from Spain and many other people,” so the idea to photo-shop others out of the picture was born since, in any case, it was only “for my personal use. I apologize if it caused any misunderstanding.”
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| Fukushima in the original picture |
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