Communication is something divine with the power to build communities and the Church, Pope Francis told thousands of journalists and people working in media and communication. Source: CNS.
“To know how to communicate displays great wisdom,” he said in brief remarks during an audience in the Paul VI Audience Hall on Saturday.
He encouraged participants in the January 24-26 Jubilee of the World of Communications to remember that it is not enough to communicate the truth, they also must be true and authentic people in their hearts and in the way they live their lives.
The midday encounter came after thousands of the pilgrims walked through the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica and made the profession of faith at the tomb of St Peter and after the Pope had had a full morning of meetings.
The Pope held up his written speech and said, “I have in my hands a nine-page speech” and “at this time of day when the stomach starts rumbling, to read nine pages would be torture”.
He gave the prepared text to Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Dicastery for Communication, to be distributed and published.
In his text, the Pope made an urgent appeal for the release of unjustly imprisoned journalists, which, according to Reporters without Borders in 2024, numbered more than 500 people.
Freedom of the press and freedom of thought must be “defended and safeguarded along with the fundamental right to be informed,” the Pope wrote.
Without “free, responsible and correct information,” he wrote, “we risk no longer distinguishing truth from lies; without this, we expose ourselves to growing prejudices and polarisations that destroy the bonds of civil coexistence and prevent fraternity from being rebuilt”.
“Not all stories are good, and yet these too must be told,” he wrote. “Evil must be seen in order to be redeemed, but it is necessary to be told well so as not to wear out the fragile threads of cohabitation.”
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Freedom for journalists is freedom for all, Pope tells media workers (By Carol Glatz, CNS)
