At 11:45am today (5:45am EDT) in the Clementine Hall at the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father, Pope Francis received in audience the Executives and the personnel from the daily newspaper Avvenire, along with their family members. Avvenire is celebrating it's 50th anniversary.
Dear friends of Avvenire,
In you, I greet a group of laity who work in a relevant and demanding field: the field of communication. I greet the President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, who I thank for his words; I greet the Secretary General, Monsignor Galantino and Monsignor Semeraro who presides over your Administrative Council.
I am pleased to share this moment with you and to do so on the day that is dedicated to Saint Joseph, the worker. It is easy for us to get attached to the figure of Saint Joseph and to entrust ourselves to his intercession. But to truly become his friends, we need to follow in his footsteps, and Joseph's footsteps reveal a reflection of God's lifestyle.
Joseph is a man of silence. At a first glance, he might even seem to be the antithesis of the communicator. In truth, it is only by turning off the noise of the world and our own chatter, that it is possible for us to listen, and listening remains as a condition before any form of communication. Joseph's silence is filled with the voice of God and it brings about a faithful obedience that leads to a special kind of existence that allows itself to be guided by His divine will.
Not surprisingly, Joseph is the man who knows how to wake up, how to get up in the middle of the night without becoming discouraged beneath the burden of difficulty. He knows how to walk in the darkness of certain moments during which he does not understand everything, yet remaining strong in a call that places him before a mystery, in which he agrees to allow himself to be involved and to which he surrenders without reserve.
Therefore, Joseph is the just man, able to entrust himself to God's dream, bringing his promises to fulfillment. He is the discreet and caring custodian who knows how to take charge of the people and the situations that life has entrusted to his responsibility. He is the teacher who - without claiming anything for himself - becomes a father, as a result of his presence, his ability to accompany, to help life to grow and to pass on a particular work of love. We know how much this last dimension - to which today's feast is connected - is important. In fact, it is precisely this fact that the dignity of people is tied to their work: not to money, nor to visibility or power, but to work. A job that provides a way for everyone, regardless of his or her role, to create entrepreneurship which is understood as an actus personae (cf Caritas in veritate, 41), where the person and his or her family remain more important than the efficiency of the work that is accomplished.
Upon closer inspection, it is not such a far stretch from the workshop in Nazareth to the editorial board of Avvenire!
Certainly, in your modern-day toolbox, there are technical instruments which have profoundly altered your profession, and even the very way of listening and of thinking, of living and of communicating, of interpreting and of relating. The digital culture has required you to re-organize your work, and to demonstrate an openness to even greater collaboration among yourselves and in harmony with other publications that belong to the Italian Episcopal Conference: the Sir Agency, Tv2000 and the InBlu radio station. Similarly to that which is occurring in the communication sector of the Holy See, the convergence and inter-activity that digital platforms make possible should lead to synergies, integration and united management. This transformation requires training and updating courses, and the awareness that attachment to the past can prove to be a pernicious temptation. Authentic servants of tradition are those who, while remembering tradition, can discern the signs of the times (cf Gaudium et spes , 11) and open new paths for the journey.
All of this is probably already part of your daily commitment as part of a technological development that globally redesigns the presence of the media, the possession of information and knowledge. In this senario, the Church feels that she cannot absent her voice from being heard, in order to be faithful to the mission that calls her to proclaim the gospel of mercy to all people. The media offer us enormous potential for contributing, with our pastoral presence, to the culture of encounter.
In order to focus on this mission, let us enter together for a moment into the carpenter's workshop; let us go back to the school of Saint Joseph, where communication is brought back to truth, beauty and the common good.
As I have observed on various occasions, today the speed of information exceeds our capacity for reflection and judgement and does not allow for a measured and correct expression of self (Message for the 48th World Day of Social Communications, 1 June 2014). Even as a Church, we are exposed to the impact and the influence of a culture of haste and superficiality: more than experience, what counts is immediate communication, information on hand that can be instantly accessed; more than confrontation and deepening, we risk exposing ourselves to the pastoral presence of applause, to a levelling of thought, to a widespread disorientation of opinions that have nothing in common.
The carpenter in Nazareth reminds us of the urgency of regaining a sense of healthy slowing down, of calm and of patience. With his silence, he reminds us that everything begins with listening, with transcending ourselves in order to open ourselves up to the word and the story that is recounted by the other.
For us, silence implies two things. On the one hand, do not lose your cultural roots, do not allow them to deteriorate. The best way to take care of this is to always find ourselves once again in the Lord Jesus, so that we can make his traits of humility and tenderness, thankfulness and compassion our own. On the other hand, a Church that lives in contemplation of the face of Christ will never struggle to recognize his face in the faces of mankind. And we can allow ourselves to be questioned and challenged by this face, in order that we may overcome myopia, deformations and discrimination.
Dialogue triumphs over suspicion and overcomes fear. Dialogue puts things in common, establishes relationships, develops a culture of reciprocity. The Church, while setting herself up as the architect of dialogue, is also purified and helped by this same dialogue in the development of a common understanding of faith.
You, dear friends of Avvenire, must continue the inheritance passed on by your fathers. Never grow weary of seeking with humility and truth, beginning with habitual reading of the Good News of the gospel. This is the editorial line to which you can link your own integrity: your profession claims you as such, so high is your dignity. Then, you will have within you the light you need to discern and the true words necessary to grasp reality and to call it by name, without reducing it to the realm of caricature.
Allow yourselves to be questioned by that which happens. Listen, deepen, compare yourselves. Stay away from blind alleys where debates take place with those who presume that they already understand everything. Help others to overcome sterile and harmful opposition. With the witness of your work, make yourselves companions to all those who spend their lives for the sake of justice and peace.
Joseph, a man of silence and listening, is also a man who during the night does not lose his ability to dream, to trust and to rely on others. Joseph's dream is a vision, courage, obedience that moves the heart and the feet. This holy man is an icon of our holy people, who recognize in God the reference that embraces all of life with a unifying effort.
Such faith involves action and arouses good habits. It involves a glance that accompanies processes, transforms problems into opportunities, improves and builds up the city of mankind. I encourage you to constantly seek out ways to define this glance; to overcome the temptation not to see, to ignore or to exclude yourselves from such situations. And I encourage you to not discriminate; to not consider anyone as excess, never to be satisfied with that which everyone sees. Let no one determine your agenda, except for the poor, the forgotten and those who are suffering. Do not run to join the ranks of those who run out to tell the part of reality that has already been brought to light by others' reflections. Begin in the peripheries, aware that those are not the endings but the beginnings of a city.
As Paul VI warned, Catholic newspapers should not provide things that make an impression or that create clients. We should do well by those who are listening, we should teach them how to think, to judge (Speech to social communication workers, 27 November 1971). The Catholic communicator avoids the rigidity that suffocates or imprisons. He does not cage the Holy Spirit, but seeks ways to allow it to fly, to allow it to breathe in the soul (Paul VI, Speech to social communication workers, 27 November 1971). Such behaviour causes reality to never give way to appearance, beauty to vulgarity, social friendship to conflict. It cultivates and strengthens every seed of life and of goodness.
Let not such difficulties stop you: it is enough to return for a moment to the climate that existed 50 years ago, the climate within which Avvenire developed, in order to remember how many questions there were, how much resistance, how much distrust and opposition sought to slow down the will of Paul VI concerning the birth of a daily Catholic paper that had a national character.
Finally, Joseph is the holy custodian, the man of concreteness and proximity. After all, in his ability to care for others lies the secret to his paternity, that which truly made him a father. The existence of the Virgin's spouse reminds us to support the Church who does not accept the reduction of the faith to the sphere of privacy and intimacy, neither does she resign herself to a moral relativism that degenerates and disorients.
May you also be able to describe a Church that does not look at reality either from outside or from above, but who is mixed up in the middle of life, who mingles with it, dwells within it - by virtue of the service that she offers - awakening and expanding hope for all people.
I encourage you to maintain the interest of the present; to avoid information available for easy consumption which does not involve commitment; to reconstruct the contexts and to explain the causes; to always remain close to people with great respect; to place your focus on the ties that make up and strengthen the community.
Nothing creates closeness like mercy does, nothing arouses attitudes of closeness, favours encounter and promotes conscientious togetherness. Being a bearer of news is the path that allows you to contribute to the renewal of society for the sake of the common good, and the dignity of each person as well as his or her full citizenship.
We need to give voice to the values embodied in the collective memory and to the cultural and spiritual reserves of the people; in order to contribute to bringing into the social, political and economic world the sensitivity and orientations of the Social Doctrines of the Church, since we ourselves are first and foremost faithful interpreters and witnesses.
Do not be afraid to get involved. Words - the real ones - carry weight: they only support those that embody them in life. Moreover, your testimony contributes to your own credibility. Let it be a passionate and joyous witness. And the final wish I want to share with you is to make mine once more the words of Blessed Paul VI: Love is necessary for the cause: if we do not love this cause, we will not combine but a little, we will immediately grow tired, we will see the difficulties, we will see ... I would also say ... the inconveniences, the polemics, the shortcomings ... We must have great love for the cause, speak what we believe about what we are doing and what we want to do (Paul VI, Speech to social communication workers, 27 November 1971).
In this love, I ask you to offer a part of your prayer for me. Thank you!
Greetings of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
for the meeting with personnel from the
Italian daily, Avvenire
Dear friends of Avvenire,
In you, I greet a group of laity who work in a relevant and demanding field: the field of communication. I greet the President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, who I thank for his words; I greet the Secretary General, Monsignor Galantino and Monsignor Semeraro who presides over your Administrative Council.
I am pleased to share this moment with you and to do so on the day that is dedicated to Saint Joseph, the worker. It is easy for us to get attached to the figure of Saint Joseph and to entrust ourselves to his intercession. But to truly become his friends, we need to follow in his footsteps, and Joseph's footsteps reveal a reflection of God's lifestyle.
Joseph is a man of silence. At a first glance, he might even seem to be the antithesis of the communicator. In truth, it is only by turning off the noise of the world and our own chatter, that it is possible for us to listen, and listening remains as a condition before any form of communication. Joseph's silence is filled with the voice of God and it brings about a faithful obedience that leads to a special kind of existence that allows itself to be guided by His divine will.
Not surprisingly, Joseph is the man who knows how to wake up, how to get up in the middle of the night without becoming discouraged beneath the burden of difficulty. He knows how to walk in the darkness of certain moments during which he does not understand everything, yet remaining strong in a call that places him before a mystery, in which he agrees to allow himself to be involved and to which he surrenders without reserve.
Therefore, Joseph is the just man, able to entrust himself to God's dream, bringing his promises to fulfillment. He is the discreet and caring custodian who knows how to take charge of the people and the situations that life has entrusted to his responsibility. He is the teacher who - without claiming anything for himself - becomes a father, as a result of his presence, his ability to accompany, to help life to grow and to pass on a particular work of love. We know how much this last dimension - to which today's feast is connected - is important. In fact, it is precisely this fact that the dignity of people is tied to their work: not to money, nor to visibility or power, but to work. A job that provides a way for everyone, regardless of his or her role, to create entrepreneurship which is understood as an actus personae (cf Caritas in veritate, 41), where the person and his or her family remain more important than the efficiency of the work that is accomplished.
Upon closer inspection, it is not such a far stretch from the workshop in Nazareth to the editorial board of Avvenire!
Certainly, in your modern-day toolbox, there are technical instruments which have profoundly altered your profession, and even the very way of listening and of thinking, of living and of communicating, of interpreting and of relating. The digital culture has required you to re-organize your work, and to demonstrate an openness to even greater collaboration among yourselves and in harmony with other publications that belong to the Italian Episcopal Conference: the Sir Agency, Tv2000 and the InBlu radio station. Similarly to that which is occurring in the communication sector of the Holy See, the convergence and inter-activity that digital platforms make possible should lead to synergies, integration and united management. This transformation requires training and updating courses, and the awareness that attachment to the past can prove to be a pernicious temptation. Authentic servants of tradition are those who, while remembering tradition, can discern the signs of the times (cf Gaudium et spes , 11) and open new paths for the journey.
All of this is probably already part of your daily commitment as part of a technological development that globally redesigns the presence of the media, the possession of information and knowledge. In this senario, the Church feels that she cannot absent her voice from being heard, in order to be faithful to the mission that calls her to proclaim the gospel of mercy to all people. The media offer us enormous potential for contributing, with our pastoral presence, to the culture of encounter.
In order to focus on this mission, let us enter together for a moment into the carpenter's workshop; let us go back to the school of Saint Joseph, where communication is brought back to truth, beauty and the common good.
As I have observed on various occasions, today the speed of information exceeds our capacity for reflection and judgement and does not allow for a measured and correct expression of self (Message for the 48th World Day of Social Communications, 1 June 2014). Even as a Church, we are exposed to the impact and the influence of a culture of haste and superficiality: more than experience, what counts is immediate communication, information on hand that can be instantly accessed; more than confrontation and deepening, we risk exposing ourselves to the pastoral presence of applause, to a levelling of thought, to a widespread disorientation of opinions that have nothing in common.
The carpenter in Nazareth reminds us of the urgency of regaining a sense of healthy slowing down, of calm and of patience. With his silence, he reminds us that everything begins with listening, with transcending ourselves in order to open ourselves up to the word and the story that is recounted by the other.
For us, silence implies two things. On the one hand, do not lose your cultural roots, do not allow them to deteriorate. The best way to take care of this is to always find ourselves once again in the Lord Jesus, so that we can make his traits of humility and tenderness, thankfulness and compassion our own. On the other hand, a Church that lives in contemplation of the face of Christ will never struggle to recognize his face in the faces of mankind. And we can allow ourselves to be questioned and challenged by this face, in order that we may overcome myopia, deformations and discrimination.
Dialogue triumphs over suspicion and overcomes fear. Dialogue puts things in common, establishes relationships, develops a culture of reciprocity. The Church, while setting herself up as the architect of dialogue, is also purified and helped by this same dialogue in the development of a common understanding of faith.
You, dear friends of Avvenire, must continue the inheritance passed on by your fathers. Never grow weary of seeking with humility and truth, beginning with habitual reading of the Good News of the gospel. This is the editorial line to which you can link your own integrity: your profession claims you as such, so high is your dignity. Then, you will have within you the light you need to discern and the true words necessary to grasp reality and to call it by name, without reducing it to the realm of caricature.
Allow yourselves to be questioned by that which happens. Listen, deepen, compare yourselves. Stay away from blind alleys where debates take place with those who presume that they already understand everything. Help others to overcome sterile and harmful opposition. With the witness of your work, make yourselves companions to all those who spend their lives for the sake of justice and peace.
Joseph, a man of silence and listening, is also a man who during the night does not lose his ability to dream, to trust and to rely on others. Joseph's dream is a vision, courage, obedience that moves the heart and the feet. This holy man is an icon of our holy people, who recognize in God the reference that embraces all of life with a unifying effort.
Such faith involves action and arouses good habits. It involves a glance that accompanies processes, transforms problems into opportunities, improves and builds up the city of mankind. I encourage you to constantly seek out ways to define this glance; to overcome the temptation not to see, to ignore or to exclude yourselves from such situations. And I encourage you to not discriminate; to not consider anyone as excess, never to be satisfied with that which everyone sees. Let no one determine your agenda, except for the poor, the forgotten and those who are suffering. Do not run to join the ranks of those who run out to tell the part of reality that has already been brought to light by others' reflections. Begin in the peripheries, aware that those are not the endings but the beginnings of a city.
As Paul VI warned, Catholic newspapers should not provide things that make an impression or that create clients. We should do well by those who are listening, we should teach them how to think, to judge (Speech to social communication workers, 27 November 1971). The Catholic communicator avoids the rigidity that suffocates or imprisons. He does not cage the Holy Spirit, but seeks ways to allow it to fly, to allow it to breathe in the soul (Paul VI, Speech to social communication workers, 27 November 1971). Such behaviour causes reality to never give way to appearance, beauty to vulgarity, social friendship to conflict. It cultivates and strengthens every seed of life and of goodness.
Let not such difficulties stop you: it is enough to return for a moment to the climate that existed 50 years ago, the climate within which Avvenire developed, in order to remember how many questions there were, how much resistance, how much distrust and opposition sought to slow down the will of Paul VI concerning the birth of a daily Catholic paper that had a national character.
Finally, Joseph is the holy custodian, the man of concreteness and proximity. After all, in his ability to care for others lies the secret to his paternity, that which truly made him a father. The existence of the Virgin's spouse reminds us to support the Church who does not accept the reduction of the faith to the sphere of privacy and intimacy, neither does she resign herself to a moral relativism that degenerates and disorients.
May you also be able to describe a Church that does not look at reality either from outside or from above, but who is mixed up in the middle of life, who mingles with it, dwells within it - by virtue of the service that she offers - awakening and expanding hope for all people.
I encourage you to maintain the interest of the present; to avoid information available for easy consumption which does not involve commitment; to reconstruct the contexts and to explain the causes; to always remain close to people with great respect; to place your focus on the ties that make up and strengthen the community.
Nothing creates closeness like mercy does, nothing arouses attitudes of closeness, favours encounter and promotes conscientious togetherness. Being a bearer of news is the path that allows you to contribute to the renewal of society for the sake of the common good, and the dignity of each person as well as his or her full citizenship.
We need to give voice to the values embodied in the collective memory and to the cultural and spiritual reserves of the people; in order to contribute to bringing into the social, political and economic world the sensitivity and orientations of the Social Doctrines of the Church, since we ourselves are first and foremost faithful interpreters and witnesses.
Do not be afraid to get involved. Words - the real ones - carry weight: they only support those that embody them in life. Moreover, your testimony contributes to your own credibility. Let it be a passionate and joyous witness. And the final wish I want to share with you is to make mine once more the words of Blessed Paul VI: Love is necessary for the cause: if we do not love this cause, we will not combine but a little, we will immediately grow tired, we will see the difficulties, we will see ... I would also say ... the inconveniences, the polemics, the shortcomings ... We must have great love for the cause, speak what we believe about what we are doing and what we want to do (Paul VI, Speech to social communication workers, 27 November 1971).
In this love, I ask you to offer a part of your prayer for me. Thank you!
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