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Francis X. Rocca

European Correspondent (former)

Francis X. Rocca is a Vatican correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Formerly, he was a European correspondent for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Stories by this Author

  • Global

    Scientists on Trial for What They Said

    Geophysicists in Italy are on trial for negligence in the lead-up to the earthquake there in 2009. How should scientists express themselves about potential crises?
  • News

    American Student in Italy Reportedly Confesses to a Fatal Stabbing

    The student was part of a group of eight students and a professor from a college in Michigan who were on what was to have been a 16-day trip abroad.
  • News

    Rising Toll From Italian Quake Includes 8 University Students

    As rescuers searched with dimming hope a collapsed dormitory at the University of L’Aquila for a few more missing students, the university’s rector vowed that the institution would continue in the city, where it is a mainstay of the economy.
  • News

    Rising Toll From Italian Quake Includes 8 University Students

    Rome At least eight students have died from the collapse of a dormitory at the University of L’Aquila in central Italy, following a powerful earthquake that struck early Monday. Blue-helmeted rescue workers were still searching on Wednesday for two or three students who remained missing amid the…
  • News

    Quake ‘Practically Destroys’ University in Italy, With Some Students Trapped or Killed

    A powerful earthquake that struck central Italy early Monday caused catastrophic damage at the University of L’Aquila, possibly killing one student and leaving more than half a dozen others trapped in the rubble of a collapsed dormitory.
  • News

    Quake ‘Practically Destroys’ University in Italy, With Some Students Trapped or Killed

    Rome A powerful earthquake that struck central Italy early Monday caused catastrophic damage at the University of L’Aquila, possibly killing one student and leaving more than half a dozen others trapped in the rubble of a collapsed dormitory. “There is an absolute need for help,” Ferdinando di…
  • News

    Clothed, for a Change

    “Dressing for success” doesn’t always work in academe. Neither does undressing, as nude models in Italy’s art schools have found. Some 30 of the models, weary of unsatisfactory pay and working conditions at state-run art academies and high schools, held a daylong strike last month at the University…
  • News

    Battling Cancer With Immodesty

    Paunchy, middle-aged guys are unlikely pinup models. Nonetheless, a group of distinguished physicians at a cancer research institute in Naples, Italy, posed in their skivvies to raise money to fight the disease. Under the slogan “Without you, research is bare,” a 2008 calendar published by the…
  • News

    In Italy, a Partisan Defender of Foreign Professors

    In the high-ceilinged chamber, five black-robed men sit on a dais behind an imposing carved bench, underneath the inscription “The Law Is Equal for All.” Facing them a few yards away, a similarly clad man stands behind a lectern, arguing for the plaintiffs in the case of Bivort et al. v. the…
  • The Review

    All in the Famiglia

    Capital of the southern Italian region of Apulia (the heel of the peninsular boot), Bari is an ancient port city whose architectural treasures include the 12th-century Romanesque cathedral of St. Nicholas, burial place of the original Santa Claus. The 1960s-era complex of concrete blocks housing…