Vatican
City, 18 October 2013 (VIS) – “Your work is a service to the
Gospel and to the Church”, writes the Holy Father to Msgr. Dario
Edoardo Vigano, director of the Vatican Television Centre (Centro
Televisivo Vaticano, CTV) on the occasion of the congress held to
commemorate thirty years since its foundation, an anniversary that
coincides with another important date – fifty years since the
approval of the Conciliar decree “Inter Mirifica”, which “numbers
among the marvellous gifts of God the tools of social communication
including, indeed, television”.
“During
these decades technology has advanced at great speed, creating
unexpected and interconnected networks”, continued Pope Francis.
“It is necessary to maintain the evangelical perspective in this
type of 'global communication highway'”, he added; “in presenting
events, your approach must be not worldly, but ecclesial”.
In
this regard, the Pontiff recalled how, shortly after being elected as
bishop of Rome, in his meeting with the journalists who had covered
the Conclave, he stated that the role of the media “has continually
grown in recent times, to the extent that they have become
indispensable for transmitting to the world the events of
contemporary history”. He continued, “All this is also reflected
in the life of the Church. But if it is not easy to narrate the
events of history, it is even more complex to report the events
linked to the Church. … This requires a special responsibility, a
great capacity for interpreting reality in a spiritual light.
Effectively, the events in the life of the Church have a special
character: they are governed by a logic that is not primarily that
of, so to say, 'worldly' categories, and precisely for this reason it
is not easy to interpret and communicate them to a broad and varied
public”.
Finally,
the Pope reiterates that the Vatican Television Centre does not
fulfil “a merely documentary, 'neutral' function in relation to
events, but rather contributes to bringing the Church closer to the
world, bridging distances, taking the word of God to millions of
Catholics, even to places where often professing one's faith is a
courageous choice. Thanks to the images [it transmits], CTV walks
alongside the Pope in bringing Christ to the many forms of solitude
of contemporary man, even reaching sophisticated technological
peripheries. In this, your mission, it is important to remember that
the Church is present in the world of communication, in all its
variegated expressions, first and foremost to lead people to the
encounter with Jesus Christ”.
Francis
concluded by asking the Virgin to guide the steps of the “pilgrims
of communication”, and invoked the intercession of St. Clare of
Assisi, patron of television.
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