To Encounter the Other? How Journalists Make Catholic Faith-Based Organizations in Mexico and Russia (In)Visible

Catholic Faith-Based Organizations (CFBOs) in Mexico and Russia are unique entities of study and comparison to understand the power dynamics between majority/minority institutional religions and their media representation. Although both countries recognize their religious diversity, Catholicism is still the major religion in Mexico, not only because of its large number of adherents but also its significant cultural and political capital. In contrast, in Russia, Catholicism is considered a minority religion and is often viewed as foreign to Russian values and traditions. These conditions influence how CFBOs have been featured in the news media in both countries. However, no single factors determine the news media visibility of CFBOs. Their (in)visibility is also shaped by the state’s project of the nation, conceptualizations of religious charity, perceptions on how the state and the church must interact in society, and beliefs of what amounts to good journalism in each country, to name a few. By combining two different studies, a discourse content analysis of CFBOs in Mexican and Russian secular mainstream news media during the first 13 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and 20 semi-structured online interviews with journalists in both countries, this dissertation explores how journalists working for non-religious mainstream news media in Mexico and Russia make CFBOs (in)visible. The point of departure is that what we see and how we see it depends on clusters of knowledge, or discourses, about how we understand the world around us at a particular period of time. Therefore, this dissertation understands visibility as a social construction where the objects of visualization are the CFBOs working in social assistance and operating in Mexico City or Moscow. My research identifies that in both countries, journalists struggle with how to reconcile looking at a religious organization that, despite the good it does for assisting vulnerable groups, is identified with the Roman Catholic Church and its connotations in each country, while upholding their professional values of objectivity and pluralism. Moreover, the ambivalence of journalists to conceive CFBOs as equal to their counterparts, the secular NGOs, demonstrates that for journalists to make visible CFBOs, the state needs to mobilize discourses surrounding the collective care of people in need, and the role that civil society, including faith-based organizations, plays in social assistance.