L'Osservatore Romano (OSSERVATORE ROMANO, L') - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IX, p. 275

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

OSSERVATORE ROMANO, L'. - Political-religious daily of Vatican City.

Under this title a newspaper edited by Abbé Battelli appeared in Rome (1848-50), which was suppressed due to pressure from the government of Turin. In 1860 the pontifical government decided to establish a strictly supervised polemical-religious daily:

Article illustration — OSSERVATORE ROMANO, L' - Portraits of past directors: Cesare Crispolti, G. Battista Casoni, Giuseppe Angelini.
L'Amico della verità; and in 1861 the deputy minister of the Interior, M. A. Pacelli, entrusted its creation to two refugees from Romagna - N. Zanchini and G. Bastia - extending the polemical task of the new newspaper, named L'o. r., to politics as well.

Financed by private individuals, but subsidized and privileged by the Government, its first issue appeared on July 1, 1861. In 1863 Marquis Augusto Baviera became its director and eventually ended up with total control of the management. Around 1873 the French group of the Journal de Rome attempted to take over L'o. r.; but the Holy See reacquired full ownership of it and prevented the attempt. The semi-official status deriving from this ownership was from time to time concealed behind the guise of being the organ of various Catholic institutions.

After 1870 the Holy See thought of pairing L'o. r. with a Milanese daily: L'osservatore cattolico (v.), and a pre-existing Florentine one: CATTOLICITÀ (v.).

Throughout the pontificate of Leo XIII the newspaper daily published a notice of protest for the occupation of Rome; during the First World War the bulletins, exclusively from Stefani, had a daily preface emphasizing the impartiality of the paper. On November 4, 1929, L'o. r. entered Vatican City; from 1934 an illustrated weekly derived from II. Directors after the aforementioned three were C. Crispolti, G. B. Casoni, C. Angelini. Since 1920 it has been directed by Count G. Della Torre di Sanguinetto. For the more recent life of the newspaper, V. GIORNALISMO CATTOLICO.

BIBL.: G. B. Casoni, Cinquant'anni di giornalismo, Bologna 1907; C. Crispolti, Rimpianti, Milano 1922; id., Pio IX ecc., ivi 1922; A. Lazzarini, L'O. R., in Vaticano, a cura di G. Fallani e M. Escobar, Firenze 1946. Andrea Lazzarini