A major conference on Church Communications concluded here in Rome yesterday. The
8th Professional Seminar for Church Communications Offices featured experts
and professional communicators from around the world, speaking about how the Church
can better convey the Gospel message in the modern world.
One of the speakers
at the conference was Jack Valero, who spearheaded an effort to train young people
to speak to the secular media during Pope’s visit to the UK in 2010. He spoke about
how faithful Catholics can share the faith in a secular world.
“We see our
role very much as training people to be in the secular where they may have been fearful
in the past,” he said. “We always say, as a Catholic you love the Faith, you love
your Church, you don’t need to defend anything, you just explain your story, tell
your story, tell it so well that people say in the end ‘I want that’.”
While
there is a place for official communications, Valero said, there is also a need to
communicate with the secular media. “But we feel that our particular mission and charism
is to train people to be there in the secular media, doing those short bursts of information,
and doing them very accurately and positively, to get through to many people and to
change the way people view the Church out there in the world.”
Listen
to the full interview of Jack Valero with Christopher Wells: