Vaticanista (Vatican correspondent)

“Vaticanista” is an Italian word meaning a news correspondent in Vatican City who reports on the Holy See. The term “Vaticanista” (also “vaticanista”) usually appears in English print when journalists swarm the Vatican for the election of a new pope for the Catholic Church.
 
“Vaticanista” has been cited in English print since at least 1978.
 
 
Wikipedia: vaticanista
Italian
Noun
vaticanista m (plural vaticanisti) vaticanista f (plural vaticaniste)
1. Vatican correspondent
 
OCLC WorldCat record
La política vaticanista en América.
Author: Carlos M Rama
Publisher: Cuernavaca Centro Intercultural de Documentación 1969.
Series: CIDOC, Doc., 69/182.
Edition/Format:   Book : Spanish
 
18 October 1978, Dallas (TX) Morning News, “‘Papabili’ often losers at Vatican” (AP), pg. 6A, col. 5:
But, said one Vaticanista, his nationality was a consideration against his election.
 
Google Books
The Seasons of Rome:
A Journal
By Paul Hofmann
New York, NY: Henry Holt
1999
Pg. 209:
This morning a former colleague, an Italian journalist specializing in Vatican news — a vaticanista— whom I have known for decades, confirmed the old lady’s information.
   
Creative Minority Report
A Vaticanista
FWIW, my working definition of a Vaticanista.
A Vaticanista is like a climatologist, he uses small amounts of irrelevant and unverifiable data to predict a future in magical concordance with his own wishes.
POSTED BY PATRICK ARCHBOLD AT 3/11/2013 05:53:00 PM
   
The Daily Beast
Conspiracy Theories Behind Pope Francis’s Election
by Barbie Latza Nadeau Mar 14, 2013 12:39 PM EDT
(...)
The Vaticanista from Corriere Della Sera, Massimo Franco, instead theorized that Bergoglio’s win was a compromise to give a nod to the strength of the Latin American faithful and show that the Vatican was willing to at least try out someone from another part of the world
 
openDemocracy
The cardinal’s knowing or unknowing surprise
ROBERT COX 17 March 2013
I am not a “Vaticanista,” as journalists who specialize in covering the Holy See are called, so I was surprised when the white smoke drifting over the Sistine Chapel heralded the election of Argentine Cardinal and Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Bergoglio as the new pope.