The leader of Vermont's Catholics has a key role in this week's Papal visit to the U.S.
The Most Reverend Christopher Coyne, Bishop of Burlington has earned the nickname "The Blogging Bishop" for his social media savvy and his relationships with the press.
And this week, he's on the road serving as the Pope's media coordinator.
On Rev. Coyne's duties during the Pope's visit this week:
I'm one of many who are doing the work of trying to coordinate the media presence and work with the papal visit... We're serving at the end over 8,000 credentialed media representatives from 600 outlets.
On working "in the cockpit" with reporters working all around:
Right, (we're) working also to get them to the venues, there's all kinds of pool reporting going on, we're trying to deal with some of the frustration when a reporter can't get to a venue because of restrictions.
I'm also around as a spiritual person, taking care of the staff and everybody else as far as celebrating the church's services and sacraments.
On doing late night masses for the reporters:
Yeah, (I'm conducting masses) at 9:30 at night, and that's only because a lot of times people have to be leaving by 5:00 in the morning to get to setups for late morning, early afternoon presentations by the pope — and I'm not getting up at 4:30 to say mass.
On landing such a big responsibility:
I've been a member of the communications committee of the Conference of Bishops for about four years now, and part of it is my background in social media.
On whether the Pope's ostensibly more liberal stances mean a new age for the Catholic Church:
I think it's a new way of how we're dialoguing with the culture and with people, I think we're talking, trying to be more engaging, more open-minded, more open-handed, and we're talking more about what we're for rather than what we're against, and I think people respond to that very well and I think that's part of the genius of what Pope Francis is doing.
