The spokespeople and press officers of large organisations can occasionally put their feet right in it by saying something that generates headlines for all the wrong reasons.

In the case of the Catholic church, the feet must be about a size 18, and the pile of dung about half a mile across.

Granted, it is was always going to be tough for the church to get a wholly glowing message through via conventional or social media in the run-up to the Pope’s visit to the UK, which begins today. Even so, the visit has been mired by controversy for months – and the powers that be at the Vatican seem to be doing their level best to inflame the situation rather than use the media to help fulfil the purpose of the exercise.

Take the Papal aide who has just pulled out of the trip, though apparent illness, after saying landing at Heathrow was like arriving in a third-world country. His remarks may be accurate if you land at terminals two or three, but were the worst-timed viewpoint imaginable.

Why do senior figures within the Catholic church persist in putting their feet squarely in it? Well let’s not go into the religious permutations, which are a labyrinth and not good territory for a PR blog anyway. And let’s not probe the characters and personalities in question, as there has been enough analysis on that front in the media these past few days.

Instead, five ways in which the church could operate a far more effective press office:

1. Understand the audience. For the UK visit, the primary audience may well be practicing and non-practicing Catholics, but there are people of all faiths to consider, and those of no faith. I’m sure the Vatican has done some thorough scouring of the UK media ahead of its visit, but if so then the effects seem negligible so far – there seems to be scant appreciation of sentiment, at least if we’re to believe the pre-match media analysis.

2. Engage transparently. Far easier said than done for the Vatican, but some rudimentary acknowledgement of the issues surrounding the visit would doubtless reduce some of the tension and demonstrate that the church understands the community’s concerns. You might scoff at the thought of @Pope on Twitter, but I know of several priests that are using digital media to engage local communities and share their perspectives. Why not HQ?

3. Make enquiries easier. Of course, the Holy See could well see thousands of questions and information requests each day from around the world. And it’s a church, not a media-friendly business, so has its priorities. Even so, making enquiries – sensible, sound enquiries rather than muck-racking – of the Vatican as a member of the media is notoriously hard. The Catholic Church in England and Wales is better, but still very much like a 1990s press office – with a list of press announcements – rather than embracing the many ways of making contact and disseminating content that exist today.

4. Pre-publicity to warm up. While the media resources for the visit itself are impressive, with social media feeds, live streaming and comprehensive itinerary details, little seems to have been done over the past few months to counter the inevitable press rumblings about the cost of the visit, the issues that are sparking protests or the role of the church in UK society today. The latter point in particular had huge scope for editorial contribution, but the impression was that the press had to really dig for it, rather than it being a well served-up series of perspectives. Press were left to draw their own parallels with the only previous UK Papal visit in 1982.

5. Fundamentally, a press office rooted in two-way communication. The Vatican press office, with its newspaper, radio and TV services, has long been adept at pushing its views out. Enquiries coming the other way, though, are a different matter. It’s possible to make enquiries, but you get the impression that it’s far easier to approach the Catholic Communications Network in this country. Perhaps that’s deliberate.

6. Some command over what senior figures say. Again, easier said than done. But communications with communities of all faiths are vital for a modern church, and there seems to be a substantial need for a more co-ordinated and cohesive approach between headquarters and the ‘local office’ in the UK. The benefits of the best-delivered communications by local teams can be undone in an instant by an errant remark. The church needs a, or a better, policy on authorised spokespeople and their media contact.

Interestingly, there seems to have been a reasonably good search strategy for the visit. Despite the obvious competition from the amount of editorial that has and will be generated in the most popular UK media, a search for ‘Pope’s UK visit’ brings up The Papal Visit site as numbers two and three.

So this is guesswork, but as a casual observer of Catholic church media strengths and weaknesses my assumption is that London is getting far more media savvy, but Rome counters that by becoming a consistent source of faux pas.