David Willey, a BBC reporter who served as the outlet’s Vatican correspondent across five papacies, has passed away.
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According to the BBC, Willey died of heart failure on July 11 in Italy.
David Douglas Willey was born in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, northwest of London, in December 1932, and grew up Catholic in nearby Marlow. He began his career as a Reuters trainee. His early work included covering the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, the founding document of the European Economic Community, which later became the European Union.
After freelancing in Algeria, Willey became the BBC’s East Africa correspondent in 1964. He went on to report from Asia, covering the Vietnam War and China in the aftermath of the communist revolution.
Willey’s most enduring legacy, however, will be his decades of reporting from Rome. He became a highly regarded authority on the Catholic Church, covering five popes throughout his distinguished career. Among his most memorable assignments was his on-the-ground reporting of the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1981. In what turned out to be one of his final career milestones, Willey had the opportunity to meet his fifth pope last year, the newly elected Pope Leo.
“I have suddenly realised with something of shock that I am already not only four years older than the late Pope Francis, but that my own life now extends through no fewer than eight successive papal reigns,” Willey wrote last year.
Willey authored a book about the late pontiff, The Promise of Francis: The Man, the Pope, and the Challenge of Change, which he personally presented to Francis in 2016.
Colleagues Pay Tribute to David Willey
Meanwhile, tributes poured in following Willey’s death.
“He was an incredible authority on the Vatican, reporting and travelling with five Popes, and was so kind, giving me insight and encouragement when I started in Rome in 2019,” BBC reporter Mark Lowen wrote.
Among those paying tribute was news producer Gillian Hazell, who worked closely with Willey in Rome. She remembered him as “an esteemed friend and colleague with a mischievous sense of humour and endless fascinating stories from his assignments around the world.”
David Willey was 93.