Sylvia Poggioli
Sylvia Poggioli is senior European correspondent for NPR's International Desk covering political, economic, and cultural news in Italy, the Vatican, Western Europe, and the Balkans. Poggioli's on-air reporting and analysis have encompassed the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the turbulent civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and how immigration has transformed European societies.
Since joining NPR's foreign desk in 1982, Poggioli has traveled extensively for reporting assignments. These include going to Norway to cover the aftermath of the brutal attacks by a right-wing extremist; to Greece, Spain, and Portugal reporting on the eurozone crisis; and the Balkans where the last wanted war criminals have been arrested.
In addition, Poggioli has traveled to France, Germany, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, and Denmark to produce in-depth reports on immigration, racism, Islam, and the rise of the right in Europe.
She has also travelled with Pope Francis on several of his foreign trips, including visits to Cuba, the United States, Congo, Uganda, Central African Republic, Myanmar, and Bangladesh.
Throughout her career Poggioli has been recognized for her work with distinctions including the WBUR Foreign Correspondent Award, the Welles Hangen Award for Distinguished Journalism, a George Foster Peabody, National Women's Political Caucus/Radcliffe College Exceptional Merit Media Awards, the Edward Weintal Journalism Prize, and the Silver Angel Excellence in the Media Award. Poggioli was part of the NPR team that won the 2000 Overseas Press Club Award for coverage of the war in Kosovo. In 2009, she received the Maria Grazia Cutulli Award for foreign reporting.
In 2000, Poggioli received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Brandeis University. In 2006, she received an honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts Boston together with Barack Obama.
Prior to this honor, Poggioli was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences "for her distinctive, cultivated and authoritative reports on 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia." In 1990, Poggioli spent an academic year at Harvard University as a research fellow at Harvard University's Center for Press, Politics, and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government.
From 1971 to 1986, Poggioli served as an editor on the English-language desk for the Ansa News Agency in Italy. She worked at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. She was actively involved with women's film and theater groups.
The daughter of Italian anti-fascists who were forced to flee Italy under Mussolini, Poggioli was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in romance languages and literature. She later studied in Italy under a Fulbright Scholarship.
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Pope Francis has said that the Catholic church must work to put an end to what he calls "unjust" laws that criminalize homosexuality, which are common in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia.
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He stressed that lack of charity with one another is also a sin and added that the Catholic Church should work to put an end to laws in some countries that criminalize homosexuality. -
Former Pope Benedict XVI was buried at the Vatican Thursday after his funeral, bringing an end to an unprecedented decade in which a reigning pope lived side by side with his predecessor.
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For the first time, one pope is presiding over the funeral of his predecessor. Pope Francis will preside over the funeral mass for Pope Benedict, who died on New Year's Eve at the age of 95.
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The body of the former Pope Benedict XVI, who died at the age of 95 on Saturday - lay in state on Monday for the first of three days before his funeral on Thursday.
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Ahead of a funeral on Thursday, mourners are paying respects to the late Pope Benedict, whose remains are on public display at the Vatican.
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Benedict XVI, the first pope in seven centuries to resign, has died at the age of 95.
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Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI has died. He was 95. Born Joseph Ratzinger in Bavaria, he oversaw a church in crisis and then became the first pontiff to step down since the 15th century.
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He is remembered as a staunch conservative who opposed modernizing reforms and as the first pope to step down since the 15th century.
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In a town in Tuscany, some cooks are moving away from the stove to cook meals in boxes with thick wool lining. These portable ovens use the wool's convection properties as a means of slow cooking.
