Mat Staver, in a Friday interview on Focal Point, revealed for the first time that the Liberty Counsel press release detailing Kim Davis’s private meeting with the Pope was pre-approved by the Vatican.
Here is the transcript from the relevant portion of the interview (starts at about the 6:41 mark):
Mat Staver: On Tuesday night we get word from the Vatican that it is time, appropriate now, to release the press release, and so we do, at 8:15 Tuesday night. We don’t usually release press releases at 8:15 at night, but we held it. …
And that was the time they said was good to do it, and so we did it.
Now people went ballistic. Some people were cheering; some were on the other side.
Bryan Fischer: Let me interject here, because I just want to tack a couple of things down here, because this has been so badly twisted, so badly distorted by the low-information media. They’ve made total hash out of the facts …
Staver: Yeah.
Fischer: … in this case, and I just want to tack this down. This was an initiative that came from the Vatican.
Staver: Right.
Fischer: This meeting between Kim Davis and the pope was not initiated by Kim Davis or her camp or you. It was initiated by the Vatican. You’ve got text messages and voicemails to back that up.
Staver: Absolutely.
Fischer: Secondly, this private meeting between the pope and Kim and Joe and some Vatican officials … she did not crash some kind of a rope line and insert herself into some situation. This was a private meeting between her and her husband and the pope, with Vatican officials, Vatican photographers, nobody else there.
And then the third thing, the press release, you only issued the press release when the Vatican gave you the all-clear. Some media outlets, Mat, have tried to paint you guys as jumping the gun, you couldn’t wait, you wanted to steal the publicity, you wanted to get in the limelight, and you jumped the gun on this. But no, that’s not the way it went down. It didn’t happen until you received the all-clear from the Vatican.
Staver: Yeah, and here’s something more. The Vatican had pre-reviewed our press release.
Fischer: Wow.
Staver: That’s not something we have made public until just now. The Vatican pre-reviewed our press release. They had had it for a couple of days. Out of deference to them, we didn’t want to say anything that would be off-record or they didn’t want to have published. We sent the press release to the Vatican, and they approved it, and they also approved that now is the time it can be released, and so we did.
This means that everything Kim Davis said about the meeting is true. First, the visit was initiated entirely by the Vatican. The pope was not "blindsided" or "ambushed" by Ms. Davis in any way. The Vatican reached out to her, not the other way round.
Second, the Vatican affirms that the meeting was a private meeting between Kim Davis and her husband with the pope (and some Vatican officials). She did not, as the low-information media wants you to believe, crash some rope line. She did not insert herself; she was invited.
And third, the Vatican confirms that the pope did in fact affirm Ms. Davis for her principled stand. He commended her "courage" and urged her to "stay strong."
Robert Moynihan, writing at "Inside the Vatican," says, “Vatican sources have confirmed to me that this meeting did occur; the occurrence of this meeting is not in doubt.”
Bottom line: Kim Davis 1, low-information media, 0.
