ESTABLISHING A COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK IN THE SERVICE OF GOOD

VATICAN CITY, MAY 28, 1999 (VIS) - This morning, John Paul II received the participants of a meeting organized by the Italian Consortium of Free Local Radio and Television, gathering to discuss the subject "Identity and Globalization."

The Pope highlighted the great "service that the media can offer in order that the message of salvation reach all."

He went on: "At times the communication (media) run the risk of obscuring - through the intensity of their images and sounds - the void, the poverty of the message and the absence of valid ethical references. Faced with communication of this type, which prefers a passive audience to active protagonists, and to stupefy rather than to aid refection, it is more than ever urgent to offer, with competence and creativity, supplementary motivation and content in order to create a communications network in the service of good."

The Holy Father indicated that "the rapid technological development of the modern age may give rise to the idea that the local dimension has been by-passed. However, this is not so. ... When the instruments of social communication disassociate themselves from a clear social and human context, the models they propose result in a depersonalized and individualistic (society), often antithetical to the true good of the person, the family and the local community."

The Pope made clear his desire that all the Christian communication media, both national and local, might intensify their collaboration and he asked communication professionals to be interpreters of "the answers that the Gospel offers to the worries and questions of the men and women of today."

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