RIP John Allen Jr

[aussie_aussie_oi_oi]

We are sad to report that Crux's Editor-in-Chief, John L. Allen Jr., died this afternoon, just before 2pm in Rome, after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 61 years old, and is survived by his widow, Elise Ann Allen, whom you all know as Crux's Senior Vatican Correspondent.
"Allen was a force of nature," we editors noted in Crux's official announcement of his passing, not only – nor even primarily – as a journalist, though he was most certainly model of journalistic integrity and excellence for us.
John Allen was our friend.
He loved Crux readers, too, as Elise Ann Allen poignantly noted in her own moving tribute to her late husband: "You are the reason we do what we do."
"During this time," she wrote, "you have accompanied John and myself with love and concern, writing frequently to ask about his health, sending notes to assure us of prayers, and offering positive reinforcement online." "This made us both feel loved and accompanied," she wrote, "and I want you to know how very much it meant to John."

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Allen was a fair-minded journalist and one of the greats. May he rest in peace.

[zeno]

[Doom]

Allen was a fair-minded journalist and one of the greats. May he rest in peace.

And he was for years the only good reporter from the National Catholic Reporter, where their level of commentary was to respond to the Vatican report which declared the ordination to the diaconate was “impossible” by saying that “it leaves the door open to women's ordination” because the report that as a mere advisory committee it doesn't have the authority to make a “definitive judgment”

[anawim]

I have to admit, I never heard of him. Since the amount of time I've spent reading the National Catholic Distorter is few and far between, it's not surprising.
RIP!

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

He moved on from the Distorter. He was the founder (I think) of Crux media, which does a good job of reporting on Catholic stuff.

[Doom]

I have to admit, I never heard of him. Since the amount of time I've spent reading the National Catholic Distorter is few and far between, it's not surprising.
RIP!

I first noticed him in Pope Benedict's first year when he filed a report disputing his own paper's own position that Benedict was an extremist, a fanatic, and was going to set up a new Inquisition by saying that while he is orthodox in his theology, as are the people he appoined, yet his views were not particularly extreme norm nor was he particularly strict in Church discipline.