What’s your speechwriting dream job?

If you could write speeches for anyone, who would it be?

Some dream of writing for heads of state, industry giants, educational leaders, great humanitarians, advocates for peace, protectors of human rights, or organizers of important labor or environmental movements.

My dream job? Speechwriter to His Holiness, the Pope.

Why? Because writing for the Pope is like writing for all of the folks mentioned above, only better. As a Catholic, how thrilling would it be to write for a man who offers spiritual guidance, moral clarity and the light of the world to a people in darkness?       

The Pope is a head of state (Vatican City), and an industry giant – his “business” is 2000 years old and has 1.1 billion members worldwide.

He runs a great humanitarian operation. The Catholic Church operates the world’s largest non-governmental school system, as well as transnational relief organizations around the globe. It runs more than 600,000 parishes and missions, hospitals, orphanages, and homes for the elderly and handicapped.

Popes are pacifists. Pope Paul VI spoke to a crowd of 150,000 people in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 4, 1966, calling for an end to the Vietnam War. Both Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor, John Paul II, opposed the war in Iraq and have offered humanitarian aid for its victims in that country.   

The Pope is a protector of human rights, including those of immigrants. He constantly preaches the sanctity of human life from natural inception to natural death. And popes have long supported the rights of laborers, from working to end child labor to providing sustenance to Poland’s Solidarity movement.

While popes have always urged Roman Catholics to take care of the earth, according to the April 17, 2008 issue of Newsweek, “The Vatican is actually the world’s only sovereign state that can lay claim to being carbon neutral.

“That’s because all the greenhouse gases from the Holy See are offset through renewable energies and carbon credits. Last summer, the city-state’s ancient buildings were outfitted with solar panels intended to be a key source of electricity, and an eco-restoration firm donated enough trees in a Hungarian national park to nullify all carbon emitted from the Vatican, which takes up one-fifth of a square mile,” the article continued.

I’m a good Italian Catholic (my maiden name is DiTallo) with all the skills necessary to be a perfect papal speechwriter.  But instead of moving to Italy, perhaps the Pope would let me be his “virtual” speechwriter, with a trip to Rome every quarter or so to touch base with His Holiness.

The Pontiff might go for this, considering he’s pretty tech savvy himself. He’s up on e-mail, has a YouTube page and a FaceBook account called Pope2You. Just yesterday, he urged his priests to use all technologies at their disposal – including blogs and social networks —to reach the faithful…and, perhaps, a few unfaithful. 

My Italian is a little rusty, and I don’t know all the languages in which the Pope might deliver his speeches, but I suspect there are Vatican translators who help his speechwriters with this sort of thing.

Best of all, I recently read the Pope employs a “Theologian of the Papal Household” – Fr. Wojciech Giertych, O.P., by name – who “reviews the drafts” of papal speeches written by “the staff of Vatican speechwriters.” Fr. Giertych’s role is to “examine theological content and look for phrases that could be misunderstood.” Just what I’d need.  

As I see it, the only roadblock to my becoming the Pope’s speechwriter is that His Holiness doesn’t know me from Adam (Eve)? However, God has known me for a long time: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I consecrated you.” (Jeremiah 1: 4-5). 

In my cover letter, do you think I might offer His name as a reference?