At 8:45am this morning (2:45am EDT), in the Sala Regia at the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father, Pope Francis received in audience the Staff of the Dicastery for Communication and those who are participating in that Dicastery's Plenary Assembly, which is taking place at the Vatican from 23 to 25 September 2019.
After having distributed the prepared text to those who were gathered, the Pope offered some unscripted remarks.
Dear brothers and sisters,
I have before me a speech to read ... it's not so long, it's seven pages ... but I'm sure that after the first few words, the majority of you will be asleep, and I won't be able to communicate. I believe that what I want to say in this speech will be understood well in reading, in reflection. This is why I am giving this speech to Doctor Ruffini, whom I thank for the words he has addressed to me, so that he may make it known to all of you. And I will take some time to speak a little spontaneously with you, to say what I have in my heart about communication. At least I think that not many will fall asleep, and we can communicate better!
Thank you for your work, thank you for this large Dicastery ... I asked the Prefect: But ... do they all work? - Yes, he said - to avoid that famous anecdote ... (One day they asked Pope John XXIII: How many work in the Vatican?, And he replied: About half). Everyone works, and they work in this attitude that expresses God's desire: to communicate Himself, in what theologians call the pericoresis: we communicate within ourselves, and we communicate to ourselves. This is the beginning of communication: it is not an office job, like advertising, for example. Communicating is precisely taking from the Being of God and having the same attitude; not being able to remain alone: the need to communicate what I have and I think that it is true, right, good and beautiful. To communicate. And you are communication specialists, you are communications technicians. We must not forget this. You communicate with your souls and with your bodies; you communicate with your minds, with your hearts, and with your hands; you communicate with everything. The real communicator gives everything, gives all of himself - as we say in my land: you put all the meat on the fire, all, you do not save any for yourselves. And it is true that the greatest communication is love: in love there is the fullness of communication: love for God and love between us.
But how should communication be done? One of the things you don't have to do is advertising, just advertising. You don't have to do as human companies do, when they try to have more people ... In a technical word: you don't have to proselytize. I would like our communication to be Christian and not a factor in proselytizing. It is not Christian to proselytize. Benedict XVI said this with great clarity: The Church does not grow by proselytism, but by attraction, that is, through the witness of others. And our communication must be witness. If you want to communicate only one truth without goodness and beauty, stop, don't do it. If you want to communicate a truth more or less, but without involving yourself, without witnessing to it with your own life, with that flesh, that truth, stop, don't do it. There is always the signature of witness in each of the things we do. Witnesses. Christians are witnesses, martyrs. This is the martyrial dimension of our vocation: to be witnesses. This is the first thing I would like to tell you.
Another thing is a certain resignation, which often enters the hearts of Christians. We see the world ...: it is a pagan world, and this is nothing new. The world has always been a symbol of the pagan mentality. Jesus asks the Father, at the Last Supper, to protect the disciples so that they do not fall into the world and into worldliness (cf Jn 17: 12-19). The climate of worldliness is not a new thing of the XXI century. It has always been a danger, there has always been temptation, it has always been the enemy: worldliness. Father, protect these so that they do not fall into the world, that the world is not stronger than them. And many, I see them, think: Yes, we must close a little, be a small but authentic church - that word gives me allergies: small but authentic: if something exists, it is not necessary to say that it is authentic. I'll come back to this. This is a retreat into oneself with the temptation of resignation. We are few: but not a few like those who defend themselves because we are few and the enemy is bigger; few like yeast, few like salt: this is the Christian vocation! We must not be ashamed of being few; and we must not think: No, the Church of the future will be a Church of the elect: we would fall into the heresy of the Essenes if we existed at another time. And so Christian authenticity would be lost. We are a Church of a few, but as a leaven. Jesus said it. Like salt. Resignation to cultural defeat - let me call it that - comes from the evil one, it does not come from God. It is not the Christian spirit, the complaint of resignation. This is the second thing I would like to tell you: don't be afraid. We are few. Yes, but with the desire to take part in the mission, to show others who we are. With our own witness. Once again I repeat that phrase Saint Francis offered to his friars when he sent them out to preach: Preach the Gospel, and if necessary, even with words. That is the meaning of bearing witness in the first place.
I am looking at this Lithuanian Archbishop up front, and I think of the Emeritus of Kaunas, who will now be made a cardinal: how many years did that man spend in prison? He did so much good with his witness! With pain ... These are our martyrs, they are the ones who give life to the Church: not our artists, our great preachers, our guardians of the true and integral doctrine ... No, the martyrs. We are a Church of martyrs. And this is the task of communicating: communicating this great wealth that we have. This is the second thing.
The third thing I take from what I said earlier, which gives me a little allergy when I hear people say it: This is a truly Christian thing, this is really so. We have fallen into the culture of adjectives and adverbs, and we have forgotten the strength of nouns. The communicator must make us understand the weight of the reality of the nouns that reflect the reality of people. And this is a mission of communicating: communicating with reality, without sweetening with adjectives or adverbs. This is a Christian thing: why do we need to say authentically Christian? It is Christian! The mere fact of the noun Christian - which means I am of Christ, is strong: it is a noun-like adjective, yes, but it is a noun. Passing from the culture of the adjective to the theology of the noun. And you have to communicate like that. How, do you know that person? - Ah, that person is so, so ...: immediately the adjective. First the adjective, perhaps, then, later, as the person is. This adjective culture has entered the Church and we, who are all brothers, forget to be brothers, to say that this is so brother, that this can be understood in the other way brother: first the adjective. Your communication is austere but beautiful: beauty is not rococo art, beauty does not need these rococo things; beauty manifests itself from the same noun, without strawberries on the cake! I believe this must be learned.
Communicating with witness, communicating by engaging in communication, communicating with the substantives of things, communicating as martyrs, that is, as witnesses to Christ, as martyrs. Learn the language of martyrs, which is the language of the Apostles. How did the Apostles communicate? We need only read that jewel which is the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, and we will see how it was communicated at that time and how Christian communication is.
Thank you, thank you very much! Then you have that (written speech) that is more built, because the base was made by you. But read it, reflect on it. Thank you for what you do, and go ahead with joy. Communicating the joy of the Gospel: this is what the Lord asks of us today. And thank you, thank you for your service and thank you for being the first Dicastery with a lay person at the head (Doctor Paolo Ruffini is the current Prefect). You are good! Keep up the good work! Thank you.
Dear brothers and sisters,
I welcome you and thank you, for the words you addressed to me on behalf of all, Doctor Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Dicastery, who for the first time is chairing the Plenary Assembly. Some of your faces are more familiar to me, because you accompany me in my daily activity and on my apostolic journeys. But I know that there are many other people who also live their own work week to the rhythm of the Pope's commitments. But they do it behind the scenes, putting all their professionalism and creativity, their passion and their discretion into their work, at the service of the Church.
I am happy to be able to see you all together today and thank you for what you do! Thanks to your work, many people are encouraged in their journey of faith and many are invited to seek and to meet the Lord. Thanks to your work, the Pope speaks in almost forty languages - it is a true "Miracle of Pentecost! Thanks to you, the magisterium of the Pope and the Church is read on paper, is listened to on the radio, is seen on television networks and on websites and shared through social media, in the increasingly swirling digital world.
This is the first time I have met you all together since the process of unification began, four years ago, in a new Dicastery of the Roman Curia for all the realities that deal with communication in different ways (see Motu proprio, The Current Context of Communications, 27 June 2015). Reforms are almost always tiring, including that of the Vatican media. There may have been particularly difficult stretches of the road, there may also have been misunderstandings, but I am happy to see that the journey is continuing with far-sightedness and prudence. I know of the effort you have made to make the best use of the resources entrusted to you, including limiting the unproductive costs.
For the Church, communication is a mission. No investment is too high to spread the Word of God. At the same time every talent must be well spent, made to bear fruit. The credibility of what we say is also measured in this effort. Furthermore, to remain faithful to the gift received, one must have the courage to change, never to feel that we have arrived, or to become discouraged. We must always get back in the game, get out of our false security and embrace the challenge of the future. To anticipate the times is not to extinguish the memory of the past, but to keep the fire alive.
I have seen the work you did. I see it every day. For this reason today I would like to thank God together with you for the strength he has given you and that he continues to give us. The grateful memory of all that has already been accomplished and the awareness of the common effort that fills you with strength to move forward on this path.
In reality, our strength alone is not enough. Saint Paul VI said this already 55 years ago, when he received the members of the first Plenary Assembly of what was then called the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications. He recognized how limited our forces were in this immense field of communication. But it is precisely because of this - he said - that it is necessary to think of another order of forces, of another way of judging things; order and way, that we are going to study at the Lord's school. [...] A thought of faith must therefore support the paucity of our humble efforts [...]. The more we make ourselves instruments in the hands of God, that is, small and generous, and the more the probability of our efficiency will grow (Insegnamenti II, 1964, 563).
We know that since then the challenges in this area have grown exponentially and our forces are never enough. The challenge to which you are called, as Christians and communicators, is really high. And that's why it's beautiful.
Therefore, I rejoice that the theme chosen for this Assembly is We are members of one another (Eph 4:25). Your strength, our strength lies in unity, in being members of one another. Only then can we better respond to the needs of the Church's mission.
In the message for this year's World Communications Day, which bears the same title, I wrote that the more cohesive and solidary a community is, the more it pursues shared goals. The metaphor of the body and the members leads us to reflect on our identity, which is based on communion and otherness. As Christians we all recognize ourselves as members of the one body of which Christ is the head, and we are called to manifest that communion which marks our identity as believers. Faith itself, in fact, is a relationship, a meeting; and under the impulse of the love of God we can communicate, welcome and understand the gift of the other and correspond to it.
Communication in the Church can only be characterized by this principle of participation and sharing. Communication is truly effective only when it becomes a testimony, that is, a participation in the life that is given to us by the Spirit and makes us discover in communion with one another, that we are members of one another.
Saint John Paul II wrote in the Apostolic Letter The Rapid Development: Both communication within the ecclesial community and that of the Church with the world require transparency and a new way of dealing with issues related to the media universe... This is one of the fields in which collaboration between the lay faithful and Pastors is most required, since, as the Council rightly points out, 'from these familiar relations between the laity and the Pastors, many advantages must be expected for the Church, ... so that the whole Church, supported by all its members, can carry out its mission for the life of the world more effectively (Lumen gentium, 37) (RS, 12).
For this reason I encourage you to continue, in your daily work, to form more and more a team, in this cooperation between lay people, religious and priests from many countries, in many languages, which is very good for the Church. May the very style of your work bear witness to communion.
I also encourage you, beyond the work of this Plenary Assembly, to look with ingenuity and creativity for all the ways to strengthen the network with the local Churches. I encourage you in this to also favour the formation of digital environments, in which you communicate and not only connect.
I know that recently this Dicastery has promoted some concrete tools so that the sharing of communication in the service of all grows between the local Churches and the Dicastery itself. I know you have new projects, which certainly will not lack the support of the Pope. With your work, you participate in the service of the unity of the Church and in the coordination of communication throughout the Roman Curia. We must walk together. We need to know how to interpret and orient our time. May ecclesial communication truly be the expression of a single body.
Thank you to each one of you, thank you also to your families and communities. I ask you, please, to pray for me, ad with all my heart, I bless you.
Testo originale nella lingua italiana
After having distributed the prepared text to those who were gathered, the Pope offered some unscripted remarks.
Unscripted remarks of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
offered to the Dicastery for Communication
Dear brothers and sisters,
I have before me a speech to read ... it's not so long, it's seven pages ... but I'm sure that after the first few words, the majority of you will be asleep, and I won't be able to communicate. I believe that what I want to say in this speech will be understood well in reading, in reflection. This is why I am giving this speech to Doctor Ruffini, whom I thank for the words he has addressed to me, so that he may make it known to all of you. And I will take some time to speak a little spontaneously with you, to say what I have in my heart about communication. At least I think that not many will fall asleep, and we can communicate better!
Thank you for your work, thank you for this large Dicastery ... I asked the Prefect: But ... do they all work? - Yes, he said - to avoid that famous anecdote ... (One day they asked Pope John XXIII: How many work in the Vatican?, And he replied: About half). Everyone works, and they work in this attitude that expresses God's desire: to communicate Himself, in what theologians call the pericoresis: we communicate within ourselves, and we communicate to ourselves. This is the beginning of communication: it is not an office job, like advertising, for example. Communicating is precisely taking from the Being of God and having the same attitude; not being able to remain alone: the need to communicate what I have and I think that it is true, right, good and beautiful. To communicate. And you are communication specialists, you are communications technicians. We must not forget this. You communicate with your souls and with your bodies; you communicate with your minds, with your hearts, and with your hands; you communicate with everything. The real communicator gives everything, gives all of himself - as we say in my land: you put all the meat on the fire, all, you do not save any for yourselves. And it is true that the greatest communication is love: in love there is the fullness of communication: love for God and love between us.
But how should communication be done? One of the things you don't have to do is advertising, just advertising. You don't have to do as human companies do, when they try to have more people ... In a technical word: you don't have to proselytize. I would like our communication to be Christian and not a factor in proselytizing. It is not Christian to proselytize. Benedict XVI said this with great clarity: The Church does not grow by proselytism, but by attraction, that is, through the witness of others. And our communication must be witness. If you want to communicate only one truth without goodness and beauty, stop, don't do it. If you want to communicate a truth more or less, but without involving yourself, without witnessing to it with your own life, with that flesh, that truth, stop, don't do it. There is always the signature of witness in each of the things we do. Witnesses. Christians are witnesses, martyrs. This is the martyrial dimension of our vocation: to be witnesses. This is the first thing I would like to tell you.
Another thing is a certain resignation, which often enters the hearts of Christians. We see the world ...: it is a pagan world, and this is nothing new. The world has always been a symbol of the pagan mentality. Jesus asks the Father, at the Last Supper, to protect the disciples so that they do not fall into the world and into worldliness (cf Jn 17: 12-19). The climate of worldliness is not a new thing of the XXI century. It has always been a danger, there has always been temptation, it has always been the enemy: worldliness. Father, protect these so that they do not fall into the world, that the world is not stronger than them. And many, I see them, think: Yes, we must close a little, be a small but authentic church - that word gives me allergies: small but authentic: if something exists, it is not necessary to say that it is authentic. I'll come back to this. This is a retreat into oneself with the temptation of resignation. We are few: but not a few like those who defend themselves because we are few and the enemy is bigger; few like yeast, few like salt: this is the Christian vocation! We must not be ashamed of being few; and we must not think: No, the Church of the future will be a Church of the elect: we would fall into the heresy of the Essenes if we existed at another time. And so Christian authenticity would be lost. We are a Church of a few, but as a leaven. Jesus said it. Like salt. Resignation to cultural defeat - let me call it that - comes from the evil one, it does not come from God. It is not the Christian spirit, the complaint of resignation. This is the second thing I would like to tell you: don't be afraid. We are few. Yes, but with the desire to take part in the mission, to show others who we are. With our own witness. Once again I repeat that phrase Saint Francis offered to his friars when he sent them out to preach: Preach the Gospel, and if necessary, even with words. That is the meaning of bearing witness in the first place.
I am looking at this Lithuanian Archbishop up front, and I think of the Emeritus of Kaunas, who will now be made a cardinal: how many years did that man spend in prison? He did so much good with his witness! With pain ... These are our martyrs, they are the ones who give life to the Church: not our artists, our great preachers, our guardians of the true and integral doctrine ... No, the martyrs. We are a Church of martyrs. And this is the task of communicating: communicating this great wealth that we have. This is the second thing.
The third thing I take from what I said earlier, which gives me a little allergy when I hear people say it: This is a truly Christian thing, this is really so. We have fallen into the culture of adjectives and adverbs, and we have forgotten the strength of nouns. The communicator must make us understand the weight of the reality of the nouns that reflect the reality of people. And this is a mission of communicating: communicating with reality, without sweetening with adjectives or adverbs. This is a Christian thing: why do we need to say authentically Christian? It is Christian! The mere fact of the noun Christian - which means I am of Christ, is strong: it is a noun-like adjective, yes, but it is a noun. Passing from the culture of the adjective to the theology of the noun. And you have to communicate like that. How, do you know that person? - Ah, that person is so, so ...: immediately the adjective. First the adjective, perhaps, then, later, as the person is. This adjective culture has entered the Church and we, who are all brothers, forget to be brothers, to say that this is so brother, that this can be understood in the other way brother: first the adjective. Your communication is austere but beautiful: beauty is not rococo art, beauty does not need these rococo things; beauty manifests itself from the same noun, without strawberries on the cake! I believe this must be learned.
Communicating with witness, communicating by engaging in communication, communicating with the substantives of things, communicating as martyrs, that is, as witnesses to Christ, as martyrs. Learn the language of martyrs, which is the language of the Apostles. How did the Apostles communicate? We need only read that jewel which is the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, and we will see how it was communicated at that time and how Christian communication is.
Thank you, thank you very much! Then you have that (written speech) that is more built, because the base was made by you. But read it, reflect on it. Thank you for what you do, and go ahead with joy. Communicating the joy of the Gospel: this is what the Lord asks of us today. And thank you, thank you for your service and thank you for being the first Dicastery with a lay person at the head (Doctor Paolo Ruffini is the current Prefect). You are good! Keep up the good work! Thank you.
Prepared Speech of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
for the meeting with the Dicastery for Communication
Dear brothers and sisters,
I welcome you and thank you, for the words you addressed to me on behalf of all, Doctor Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Dicastery, who for the first time is chairing the Plenary Assembly. Some of your faces are more familiar to me, because you accompany me in my daily activity and on my apostolic journeys. But I know that there are many other people who also live their own work week to the rhythm of the Pope's commitments. But they do it behind the scenes, putting all their professionalism and creativity, their passion and their discretion into their work, at the service of the Church.
I am happy to be able to see you all together today and thank you for what you do! Thanks to your work, many people are encouraged in their journey of faith and many are invited to seek and to meet the Lord. Thanks to your work, the Pope speaks in almost forty languages - it is a true "Miracle of Pentecost! Thanks to you, the magisterium of the Pope and the Church is read on paper, is listened to on the radio, is seen on television networks and on websites and shared through social media, in the increasingly swirling digital world.
This is the first time I have met you all together since the process of unification began, four years ago, in a new Dicastery of the Roman Curia for all the realities that deal with communication in different ways (see Motu proprio, The Current Context of Communications, 27 June 2015). Reforms are almost always tiring, including that of the Vatican media. There may have been particularly difficult stretches of the road, there may also have been misunderstandings, but I am happy to see that the journey is continuing with far-sightedness and prudence. I know of the effort you have made to make the best use of the resources entrusted to you, including limiting the unproductive costs.
For the Church, communication is a mission. No investment is too high to spread the Word of God. At the same time every talent must be well spent, made to bear fruit. The credibility of what we say is also measured in this effort. Furthermore, to remain faithful to the gift received, one must have the courage to change, never to feel that we have arrived, or to become discouraged. We must always get back in the game, get out of our false security and embrace the challenge of the future. To anticipate the times is not to extinguish the memory of the past, but to keep the fire alive.
I have seen the work you did. I see it every day. For this reason today I would like to thank God together with you for the strength he has given you and that he continues to give us. The grateful memory of all that has already been accomplished and the awareness of the common effort that fills you with strength to move forward on this path.
In reality, our strength alone is not enough. Saint Paul VI said this already 55 years ago, when he received the members of the first Plenary Assembly of what was then called the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications. He recognized how limited our forces were in this immense field of communication. But it is precisely because of this - he said - that it is necessary to think of another order of forces, of another way of judging things; order and way, that we are going to study at the Lord's school. [...] A thought of faith must therefore support the paucity of our humble efforts [...]. The more we make ourselves instruments in the hands of God, that is, small and generous, and the more the probability of our efficiency will grow (Insegnamenti II, 1964, 563).
We know that since then the challenges in this area have grown exponentially and our forces are never enough. The challenge to which you are called, as Christians and communicators, is really high. And that's why it's beautiful.
Therefore, I rejoice that the theme chosen for this Assembly is We are members of one another (Eph 4:25). Your strength, our strength lies in unity, in being members of one another. Only then can we better respond to the needs of the Church's mission.
In the message for this year's World Communications Day, which bears the same title, I wrote that the more cohesive and solidary a community is, the more it pursues shared goals. The metaphor of the body and the members leads us to reflect on our identity, which is based on communion and otherness. As Christians we all recognize ourselves as members of the one body of which Christ is the head, and we are called to manifest that communion which marks our identity as believers. Faith itself, in fact, is a relationship, a meeting; and under the impulse of the love of God we can communicate, welcome and understand the gift of the other and correspond to it.
Communication in the Church can only be characterized by this principle of participation and sharing. Communication is truly effective only when it becomes a testimony, that is, a participation in the life that is given to us by the Spirit and makes us discover in communion with one another, that we are members of one another.
Saint John Paul II wrote in the Apostolic Letter The Rapid Development: Both communication within the ecclesial community and that of the Church with the world require transparency and a new way of dealing with issues related to the media universe... This is one of the fields in which collaboration between the lay faithful and Pastors is most required, since, as the Council rightly points out, 'from these familiar relations between the laity and the Pastors, many advantages must be expected for the Church, ... so that the whole Church, supported by all its members, can carry out its mission for the life of the world more effectively (Lumen gentium, 37) (RS, 12).
For this reason I encourage you to continue, in your daily work, to form more and more a team, in this cooperation between lay people, religious and priests from many countries, in many languages, which is very good for the Church. May the very style of your work bear witness to communion.
I also encourage you, beyond the work of this Plenary Assembly, to look with ingenuity and creativity for all the ways to strengthen the network with the local Churches. I encourage you in this to also favour the formation of digital environments, in which you communicate and not only connect.
I know that recently this Dicastery has promoted some concrete tools so that the sharing of communication in the service of all grows between the local Churches and the Dicastery itself. I know you have new projects, which certainly will not lack the support of the Pope. With your work, you participate in the service of the unity of the Church and in the coordination of communication throughout the Roman Curia. We must walk together. We need to know how to interpret and orient our time. May ecclesial communication truly be the expression of a single body.
Thank you to each one of you, thank you also to your families and communities. I ask you, please, to pray for me, ad with all my heart, I bless you.
Testo originale nella lingua italiana
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