News coverage of the Church dealing with the pandemic: Spanish and Italian newspapers

Abstract

This paper focuses on media representation of the Catholic Church during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic in Italy and Spain. The purpose is to know when and how the Catholic Church starred in the news; how its actions were presented, and using which frames. The work analyses the coverage of the Church in Corriere della Sera and El País between January and May 2020 and connects the deductive process (news frames by Semetko and Valkenburg) with the inductive process (setting common places or topoi) in order to get a better understanding of the news-framing. Findings show that both newspapers gave prevalence to news about the charitable work of the Catholic Church during the pandemic instead of about conflict with the political authorities because of restrictive measures. When it comes to the relationship with civil institutions, a positive image of the Church was offered, one that portrayed her as ready to collaborate and apply the preventive measures recommended by the health authorities. The positive perception is more frequent than the negative one when there are dualities in the topoi that are found in the interpretation of the facts.