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Ben Bolton, former AP reporter who covered Vatican II and its presiding pontiffs, dies at 82

Associated Press
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    FILE - In this Dec. 1965 file photo, Pope Paul VI, left, greets Ben Bolton, Associated Press Vatican Correspondent, at the Vatican Palace in Vatican City, Italy. Bolton was presenting the pontiff with a 30 page album of Associated Press photographs of the pontiff's trip to the UN Headquarters in New York. Msg. Paul Marcinkus of Chicago, center, staff member of the Vatica Secretariate of State and English Advisor to the Pontiff translates the conversation. Bolton, who covered the Second Vatican Council and two papacies for The Associated Press, has died, his family said Friday, Jan. 9, 2015. He was 82. Metastatic cancer had been discovered throughout Bolton's body after a hospitalization for a fall last month, his daughter Catherine said. Bolton died Dec. 28, 2014, at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland. (AP Photo/File) (The Associated Press)

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    FILE - In this June 6, 1969 file photo, AP reporter Ben Bolton sits at his desk at the Associated Press headquarters in New York. Bolton, who covered the Second Vatican Council and two papacies for The Associated Press, has died, his family said Friday, Jan. 9, 2015 He was 82. Metastatic cancer had been discovered throughout Bolton's body after a hospitalization for a fall last month, his daughter Catherine said. Bolton died Dec. 28, 2014, at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland. (AP Photo/File) (The Associated Press)

Ben Bolton, who covered the Second Vatican Council and two papacies for The Associated Press, has died at the age of 82.

Bolton's daughter, Catherine, says her father died Dec. 28 at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland

After arriving in Rome at the age of 29, Bolton soon found himself immersed in the transformative meetings that became known as Vatican II. The meetings took place over three years and helped modernize the Catholic Church.

Bolton covered the death of the man who presided over the start of those talks, Pope John XXIII, and the election of Pope Paul VI, who closed the sessions.

He returned to the U.S. after six years in Rome, remaining with the AP for a time, then working for a number of other news outlets.
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