Alessandro Speciale

Alessandro Speciale covers the Vatican and religious affairs for the Italian news agency Asca. He is a regular contributor to the magazine Jesus, to the daily Liberazione, to the Italian-language programs of Swiss Radio and, in English, to the Catholic weekly The Tablet. He has also written for the daily Il Riformista, for the magazines Micromega, Left and Adista, and, in English, for The Daily Telegraph. He has also worked on documentaries for BBC Radio and Al Jazeera English and organised the first-ever interview of the the Vatican "prime minister" — Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone — for an Arab television network. He has covered trips by Pope Benedict XVI to the Holy Land, France, Czech Republic and Malta and has reported from Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh.

Speciale studied international journalism at City University in London and history and literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. He is an avid AS Roma fan and, though covering the Catholic Church on a daily basis, still considers himself Catholic, if not a very practicing one.