WORLD COMMUNICATIONS DAY: "PREACH FROM THE HOUSETOPS"

VATICAN CITY, JAN 24, 2001 (VIS) - As is traditional on today's memorial of St. Francis de Sales, patron of journalists, Pope John Paul's Message for World Communications Day was published. The theme for the 35th World Communications Day which will be held on May 27, 2001, is "'Preach from the Housetops': The Gospel in the Age of Global Communication."

"In today's world," the Pope writes, "housetops are almost always marked by a forest of transmitters and antennae sending and receiving messages of every kind to and from the four corners of the earth. It is vitally important to ensure that among these many messages the word of God is heard. To proclaim the faith from the housetops means to speak Jesus' word in and through the dynamic world of communications."

John Paul II adds that "the voice of Christians can never fall silent, for the Lord has entrusted to us the word of salvation for which every human heart longs.

"It follows that the Church cannot fail to be ever more deeply involved in the burgeoning world of communications," he underscores. "The media are having an increasingly visible effect on culture and its transmission. Where once the media reported events, now events are often shaped to meet the requirements of the media. Thus, the relationship between reality and the media has grown more intricate, and this is a deeply ambivalent phenomenon."

The Pope then points to the "indifference and even hostility of the media towards Christian faith and morality," adding that, often for the media "the only absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths. ... In such a view, what matters is not the truth, but 'the story'; if something is newsworthy or entertaining, the temptation to set aside considerations of truth almost becomes irresistible." Though not a friendly environment for Christians, writes the Pope, they cannot retreat from it, but rather they must remember St. Paul's words: "Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!"

The Holy Father also recognizes the good performed by the media and "the unique opportunities" it offers for reaching a global audience as well as "the positive capacities of the Internet to carry religious information and teaching beyond all barriers and frontiers. ... Catholics should not be afraid to throw open the doors of social communications to Christ, so that His Good News may be heard from the housetops of the world!"

In closing observations, Pope John Paul points to the need to better and more widely use the media in evangelization, in particular because "an estimated two thirds of the world's six billion people do not in any real sense know Jesus Christ, and many of them live in countries with ancient Christian roots, where entire groups of the baptized have lost a living sense of the faith, or no longer consider themselves as members of the Church."

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