Dive Brief:

• A petition submitted to the Vatican by William Peter Blatty, author of “The Exorcist,” seeking to strip Georgetown University of its Catholic and Jesuit labels has drawn an official response, calling it “a well-founded complaint.”
• The response says that Blatty’s petition cannot be addressed directly because it doesn’t represent a party that has suffered “an objective change,” but that the church is “taking the issue seriously.”
• Blatty, a Georgetown graduate, had gathered 2,000 signatures for his petition. The petition claimed that the university’s faculty and student body are not sufficiently Catholic, the Washington Post reported.

Dive Insight:

Georgetown told the Post it has heard nothing from the Vatican, and it disputes Blatty’s claims. Blatty’s petition is connected with a group aligned with the Cardinal Newman Society, which represents frustrated conservative Catholics who want Catholic institutions to return to a more orthodox and uniform approach.