BBC Vatican Correspondent David Willey Dies at 93 After Covering 5 Popes
Updated
Updated · bbc.co.uk · Jul 12
BBC Vatican Correspondent David Willey Dies at 93 After Covering 5 Popes
3 articles · Updated · bbc.co.uk · Jul 12
Summary
David Willey, one of the BBC's longest-serving foreign correspondents, died of heart failure in Italy at 93 after more than 50 years reporting abroad.
Best known as the BBC's Vatican correspondent in Rome, he became a leading authority on the Holy See and covered the papacies of five popes, including the 1981 assassination attempt on John Paul II.
Willey was still working into his nineties; after Pope Francis died last year, he wrote about how the Vatican had changed under the late pontiff and noted his life had spanned eight papal reigns.
His career began at Reuters, where he covered the 1957 Treaty of Rome, and later took him through Algeria, East Africa, Vietnam and China before decades in Italy earned him an OBE for broadcast journalism.