Vatican City, 22 January 2016 (VIS) –
This morning the a press conference was held to present the Holy
Father's Message for the fiftieth World Day of Social Communications.
The panel was composed of Msgr. Dario Vigano, prefect of the
Secretariat for Communication, Paolo Ruffini, director of TV2000, and
Marinella Perroni of the Pontifical Athenaeum of St. Anselm, Rome.
The prefect mentioned that this World
Day of Social Communications, which the Church celebrates on May 8,
is the fiftieth in chronological order: an important fact that
relates to Vatican Council II, which fifty years ago issued the
Decree on the tools of social communication, "Inter mirifica".
It is also the only World Day established by the Council, and on this
occasion it is also situated in the context of the great
Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, to which the theme of the Day refers
directly. Finally, it will be the first World Day of Social
Communications held following the creation by the Holy Father of the
Secretariat for Communications.
Following this preamble, Msgr. Vigano
emphasised that mercy is the distinctive feature of the Church's way
of acting and of being. The relationship between the Church and mercy
is not an extrinsic one, or indeed accidental … but rather
intrinsic, constitutive, part of the very identity of the Church. The
experience of the Pentecost is the beginning of the historic
experience of the Church. The Church carries the memory of Jesus and
therefore cannot interpret the words of His announcement other than
in relation to mercy. They are works awaiting by those who think they
are far from the God of mercy of Whom we often have a distorted
image, such as that of God as a ruthless judge unable to engage with
the limits of suffering. … For the men and women of today, for
Jesus' Church, these are the words to offer as an antidote to the
harsh words of precepts pronounced by those who make accusations of
prevailing relativism and the irrevocability of values. .. The Church
called to participate in the messianic mission must know how to live
in a true and authentic humanity. She must learn from Jesus how to
express mercy in words of hope and life and in engaging gestures,
letting us be touched by human experience and knowing, as Pope
Francis often reminds us, how to touch the flesh of the least among
us".
The second point was the relationship
between silence and listening. Msgr. Vigano cited the Swiss
philosopher Max Picard, who explained that contemporary man has
become an appendix to noise, atrophying in a context of words shouted
instead of spoken, that reduce to a minimum our capacity to listen
and cause a lack of attention. "Listening is a necessary act for
the development of communication and it requires above all silence,
an indispensable condition for receiving each word pronounced and for
understanding its meaning. … We communicate only to the extent that
we are are the same time listeners, and Pope Francis' attention to
this dichotomy is constant". Pope Benedict XVI too paid great
attention to this issue, when in the Message for the 2012 World Day
of Social Communications he wrote that when messages and information
are abundant, silence becomes essential to enable us to distinguish
what is important from what is insignificant and secondary".
The prefect concluded by quoting
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote that the merciful "have an
irresistible love for the down-trodden, the sick, the wretched, the
wronged, the outcast and all who are tortured with anxiety. They go
out and seek all who are enmeshed in the toils of sin and guilt. No
distress is too great, no sin too appalling for their pity". "It
is the blessing of mercy that the Church is called to live, first and
foremost in her relationships as the Christian community is not an
elite group, nor is it made up of the perfect. St. Paul … invites
us all to recognise the starting point of Christian and ecclesial
life, which is God's love and, by His grace, participation in His
holiness".
Finally, Msgr. Vigano returned to the
theme of silence: "From this Gehenna of noise that is our daily
life, from this wind tunnel of gossip, and chatter there arises
spontaneously a nostalgia for silence, the wish to mute words of
manipulation, to discover the words of silence. Contemporary man,
almost without realising it, is calling out with Verlaine, give me
silence, and the love of mystery.
The director of TV2000, Paolo Ruffini,
spoke about the need for television able to look upon the world with
the eyes of mercy, without being afraid of being rooted in reality.
"It must not be closed up in its own studies. … It chooses
closeness as a criterion for understanding, for surprising itself and
for surprising, for acting, for choosing. … It draws near to people
in flesh and blood in the real world, not in the virtual one … and
is able to communicate reality without surrendering to stereotypes,
or to the vicious circles of condemnation and vengeance which, as the
Pope writes, continue to ensnare us".
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