Longtime AP Rome bureau chief Victor Simpson, who covered 5 popes, dies at 84

ROME (AP) — Victor L. Simpson, the longtime Rome bureau chief for The Associated Press whose four decades as a foreign correspondent spanned five popes, wars and violence that touched him personally, has died. He was 84.

Simpson died of cancer Sunday at his home in Rome, his children said Monday.

During a 46-year AP career, Simpson covered many of the defining stories of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, from the 1967 Newark, New Jersey, race riots and war in the Middle East to the papacy of Pope John Paul II, whom he accompanied on dozens of trips.

A native New Yorker, Simpson joined the AP in Newark in 1967, where he wrote an award-winning series on organized crime. He transferred to the General Desk in 1968, editing top domestic stories, and then to the Foreign Desk in 1970.

He was assigned to Rome as news editor in 1972, where he promptly met his future wife, Daniela Petroff, who became a distinguished AP fashion and Vatican correspondent. She died in February at age 80.

He became Rome bureau chief in 2005. Simpson previously worked for the Hackensack (New Jersey) Record.

“Victor had an extraordinary life and career, and built a lasting legacy at the AP,” said AP Executive Editor Julie Pace. “Years after his retirement, he still comes up regularly in stories and conversations in AP bureaus around the world — a testament to the impact he had on generations of AP journalists. I know that legacy will endure for many years to come.”

Simpson loved to regale listeners about his journalistic feats, which included a private dinner conversation on the papal plane with John Paul and an interview with Svetlana Alliluyeva, the daughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. He secured the scoop by showing up at Alliluyeva’s door in Princeton, New Jersey, where she lived after defecting from the USSR.

“He put a lasting mark on AP, from his days as a feisty young staffer in our Newark bureau, through years as an energetic mainstay on our central news desk in New York, and then during a storied career in Rome,” said retired AP President and CEO Louis D. Boccardi, who called him “one of a kind.”

His life was marked by tragedy

Simpson’s life was marked by two devastating personal tragedies: the shooting death of his father during a robbery in 1964, and the killing of his 11-year-old daughter, Natasha, by Palestinian militants who attacked Rome’s airport on Dec. 27, 1985.

Simpson was preparing to fly to the United States with his family when the militants stormed the airport, throwing grenades and firing automatic weapons. Natasha was among more than a dozen people killed. Simpson and the couple’s 9-year-old son, Michael, were both wounded.

Natasha’s killing “was a tragedy that affected us all deeply,” Boccardi recalled.

Two years later, Simpson and Petroff welcomed another daughter, Debbie. The pope called the family to congratulate them.

In announcing his death, his children, Michael and Debbie, said the pain he carried over Natasha’s killing “has finally evaporated, leaving only love behind.”

When Simpson was 22, his father, Leonard P. Simpson, a well-known New York lawyer, was shot and killed in the elevator of the family’s apartment building. He was 63.

“The murder was considered yet more proof of New York’s degradation,” Simpson wrote in his 2024 memoir “Life of a Reporter.”

He described how an “exuberant” Jimmy Breslin interviewed the family for a story about the difficulties of the middle class in the crime-ridden era. The experience taught him an important lesson in journalism about being considerate and sensitive with the victims of tragedy.

Simpson’s optimism and devotion to family and work sustained him through the tragedies.

He was the unofficial dean of the Rome press corps

He was born May 11, 1942, and raised in a Jewish family. He said that while religion wasn’t a centerpiece, “tolerance was considered a precious value.” He graduated from Hobart College in 1963 and briefly served in the U.S. Army.

Simpson kept his extended family close, making overseas trips for weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs. “It meant a huge amount to me,” said his niece, Catherine Simpson Bueker.

Simpson was the unofficial dean of the Rome press corps and a first stop for new correspondents. Decades covering the Holy See made him one of the longest-serving Vatican correspondents of his generation, including 92 trips with John Paul and Pope Benedict XVI.

Simpson had a special bond with John Paul II

It was on one of those flights in 1986 that Simpson was invited to dine with John Paul on the final leg following a two-week tour of Asia and the Pacific.

Simpson, in a rumpled safari jacket detested by his fashion-writer wife, apologized to the pontiff for wearing “my working clothes.” The pope put him at ease, gripping his white robes and saying, “These are my working clothes.”

One of his biggest exclusives came on a 1988 flight to Uruguay when he asked John Paul about the Solidarity strikes challenging the communist government in his native Poland. John Paul responded with full papal support for the strikes.

“Here we are touching the heart of the problem,” the pope said. “It is not easy to bring democracy to a system that is by definition dictatorial and totalitarian.”

The remarks made front pages around the world and were later viewed as a landmark in the pope’s role in communism’s collapse in Eastern Europe.

Philip Pullella, longtime Vatican reporter for United Press International and then Reuters, said Simpson’s Jewish background allowed him to cover the Vatican with some distance without falling into “false awe” of the institutional pomp.

“He was the gold standard. I don’t think he was ever intimidated by the Vatican. He saw it as an institution that needed to be covered in an impartial way,” Pullella said.

Simpson’s assignments included the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic 1977 visit to Israel, and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. His early Rome years focused heavily on domestic and international violence by militants, famous kidnappings and enduring mysteries like the 1980 Ustica air disaster that killed 81 people.

He loved tennis and reported from the Italian Open for years and once from Wimbledon.

A papal resignation changes his retirement plans

Simpson had planned to retire on Feb. 28, 2013, but Benedict stunned the world by announcing he would become the first pope in nearly 600 years to resign, effective the same date as Simpson’s departure.

Simpson always wondered if he had given the idea of retirement to the German pope. He had had a brief private conversation with Benedict while returning from Lebanon in September 2012 on what was to be Simpson’s last papal flight before retirement.

“When I told him that I had covered the Vatican for more than 30 years, he looked surprised. He sounded wistful as he said my retirement ‘is much deserved,’” Simpson recalled in a tribute after Benedict died.

Simpson stayed to cover one final papal transition, the 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis.

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AP writers Nicole Winfield and Andrew Dampf contributed.