Pope's Message for World Communications Day is Released

(24 Jan 08 - RV) Pope Benedict XVI’s Message for the 42nd World Day of Social Communications was presented Thursday at the Vatican.
World Day for Social communications is celebrated worldwide on May 4^th, but the Pope’s message was launched by President of the Pontifical Council for social communications Archbishop Claudio Celli Thursday, the feast day of St Francis de Salles, patron St of Journalists.
Introducing the Papal text to foreign journalists at the Vatican Press office, Archbishop Celli said that media can be instruments of hope when they are used correctly.
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“We cannot imagine the actual world the actual life humanity without the positive contribution of the media mutual understanding, the path of peace, solidarity. The media’s are really the positive instruments of such a development of the human life”.

In his message divided into six parts Pope Benedict goes on to note the precious and decisive role that media continue to have. Msgr Paul Tighe the recently appointed Under Secretary to the council explains:

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“The wonderful good they’ve done that the document picks up on very clearly with the help of bringing about things like literacy, bringing communities closer together, helping to create a better democracy in different situations. I just think if we think back to quite recently how maybe the international awareness of what was happening in Burma came because individuals were able to use be it only cellphones to make known to the outside world what was happening”.

 

But the Pope also warns against a far darker reality in modern media, underlining that new technologies are only a means not an ends in themselves. “Unfortunately” he writes, these new technologies “risk being transformed into systems aimed at subjecting humanity to agendas dictated by the dominant interests of the day”. Moreover, the Pope points out “in certain situations the media are used not for the proper purpose of disseminating information, but to “create” events”. Archbishop Celli says this happens when media are not committed to the search for truth, but to self promotion.

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Concluding his message Pope Benedict writes : “Many people now think there is a need, in this sphere, for “info-ethics”, Msgr Tighe points out that it is one way to avoid the media becoming spokesmen for economic materialism and ethical relativism, true scourges of our time”.

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The full text of Pope Benedict XVI’s world day for social communications is available on or website at www.vaticanradio.org