Pope Francis published his message for the 59th World Day of Social Communications held this Friday coinciding with the feast of San Francisco de Sales, patron of the communicators.
Share with meekness the hope in your hearts (cf. 1 p 3,15-16)
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Dear brothers and sisters:
In our time, marked by misinformation and polarization, where few centers of power control an unprecedented data and information, I tell you convinced how necessary – today more than ever – it is your work as journalists and communicators. His brave commitment is indispensable to put personal and collective responsibility towards others in the center of communication.
Thinking about him Jubilee That we celebrate this year as a period of grace in such a turbulent time, I would like to invite them to be communicators of hope, beginning with a renewal of their work and mission according to the spirit of the Gospel.
Disassemble communication
Today, communication does not generate hope, but fear and despair, prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hate. Many times reality is simplified to raise instinctive reactions; The word is used as a dagger; False or skillfully deformed information is used to launch messages destined to incite the spirits, to cause, to hurt. I have already affirmed on several occasions the need to “disarm” communication, to purify it from aggressiveness.
Reduce reality to a slogan It never produces good fruits. We all see how – from interview programs to verbal wars on social networks – threatens to prevail the paradigm of competition, of the contrast, of the will for dominion and possession, of manipulation of public opinion.
There is also another worrying phenomenon, which we could define as the “programmed dispersion of attention” through digital systems, which, by profiling according to market logics, modify our perception of reality.
In this way we attend, often impotent, to a kind of atomization of interests, and this ends up undermining the foundations of our community being, the ability to work together for the common good, to listen to us, to understand the reasons of the other. It seems then that identifying an “enemy” against which to launch verbally is indispensable to self -affirm. And when the other becomes “enemy,” when his face and dignity get dark to humiliate him and make fun of him, the possibility of generating hope is also lost.
As Don Tonino Bello has taught us, all conflicts “find their root in the dissolution of faces” (1). We cannot give ourselves to this logic.
Waiting, in reality, is not easy at all. Georges Bernanos said that “only those who have had the courage to despair of the illusions and lies in which they found a security that they took falsely for hope were waiting. (…) Hope is a risk to run. It is even the risk of risks » (2).
Hope is a hidden, constant and patient virtue. However, for Christians hope is not an optional choice, but an essential condition. As I remembered Benedict XVI in the Encyclical Spe salvihope is not passive optimism but, on the contrary, a “performative” virtue, that is, capable of changing life: “who has hope lives differently; He has been given a new life ”(n. 2).
Give reason with meekness of hope in us
In Peter’s first letter (cf. 3,15-16) we find an admirable synthesis where hope is related to testimony and Christian communication: «Glorify Christ, the Lord.
Are always willing to defend themselves in front of anyone who asks you for the hope you have. But do it delicately and respect. I would like to stop in three messages that we can deduce from these words.
«Glorify Christ in their hearts, the Lord»: The hope of Christians has a face, the face of the risen Lord. His promise of always being with us through the gift of the Holy Spirit allows us to wait against all hope and see the traces of the hidden good, even when everything seems lost.
The second message asks us to be prepared to give reason for the hope in us. It is interesting to note that the apostle invites you to give an account of hope to “anyone who asks them.”
Christians, first of all, are not those who “speak” of God, but those who reflect the beauty of their love, a new way of living all things. It is the love lived that raises the question and demands the answer: why do they live like this? Why are they like that?
In the expression of San Pedro we finally find a third message: that the answer to this question is given “with delicacy and respect.”
The communication of Christians – but would also say that communication in general – should be interwoven of meekness, proximity, in the style of classmates, following the greatest communicator of all time, Jesus of Nazareth, who throughout the I route dialogued with the two Emaus disciples by burning their hearts for the way in which he interpreted the events in the light of the Scriptures.
Therefore, I dream of a communication that knows how to make us companions on the way to so many brothers and sisters of ours, to rekindle in them the hope in such an troubled time. A communication that is able to speak to the heart, not to raise passional reactions of isolation and rage, but attitudes of openness and friendship; able to bet on beauty and hope even in the seemingly more desperate situations; Able to generate commitment, empathy, interest in others.
A communication that helps us “recognize the dignity of each human being and (a) take care of our common house” (Letter en. Loves us217).
I dream of a communication that does not sell illusions or fears, but is able to give reasons to wait. Martin Luther King said: “If I can help someone pass, if I can cheer someone with a word or a song, (…) then my life will not have been in vain” (3). To do this we must heal from the “diseases” of prominence and self -referentiality, avoid the risk of useless speeches.
What the good communicator achieves is that whoever listens, reads or looks can participate, can feel included, can find the best part of himself and enter with these attitudes in the stories narrated. Communicating in this way helps become “pilgrims of hope,” as the retilee motto says.
Wait
Hope is always a community project. Let us think for a moment of the greatness of this year of grace: we are all invited – just all! – to recommend, to allow God to lift us, to let us hug us and flood us with mercy.
In all this, the personal and community dimension is intertwined: we undertake a trip together, we pilgrims along with many brothers and sisters, we cross the holy door together.
The jubilee has many social implications. Let us think, for example, the message of mercy and hope for those who live in prisons, or in the call to closeness and tenderness towards those who suffer and are marginalized.
The jubilee reminds us that how many work for peace “will be called children of God” (Mt 5.9). Thus opens to hope, it indicates the demand for attentive, calm, reflective communication, capable of indicating paths of dialogue.
I encourage them, therefore, to discover and tell the numerous stories of well hidden among the folds of the chronicle; To imitate gold seekers, who tirelessly sift the sand in search of the tiny pepita. It is beautiful to find these seeds of hope and make them known.
It helps the world to be a little less deaf to the shout of the last, a little less indifferent, a little less closed. They always know how to find the flashes of good that allow us to wait. This communication can contribute to interweave communion, to make us feel less alone, to discover the importance of walking together.
Do not forget the heart
Dear brothers and sisters, before the vertiginous conquests of the technique, I invite you to take care of their hearts, that is, the inner life. What does this mean? I leave some clues.
Be meek and never forget the face of the other; speak to the heart of women and men to whose service their work is directed.
Do not allow instinctive reactions to guide communication. Sowing hope always, even when it is difficult, even when it costs, even when it seems not to bear fruit.
Try to practice communication that knows how to heal the wounds of our humanity.
Give space to the confidence of the heart that, like a fragile but resistant flower, does not succumb to the inclement life but it blooms and grows in the most unthinkable places: in the hope of mothers who pray every day to see their children return from the trenches of a conflict; in the hope of parents who migrate between a thousand risks and adventures in search of a better future; In the hope of the children who manage to play, smile and believe in life even among the debris of the wars and in the poor streets of the favelas.
Being witnesses and promoters of non -hostile communication, which disseminates a culture of care, that builds bridges and crosses the visible and invisible walls of our time.
Tell stories full of hope, taking into account our common destiny and writing together the history of our future.
All this can and we can do it with the grace of God, that the jubilee helps us to receive in abundance. I pray for this and I bless each of you and your work.
Rome, San Juan de Letán, January 24, 2025, Memory of San Francisco de Sales.
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(1) Cf. « Peace as a search for the face“, in Homagenies and Lenten writingsMolfetta 1994, 317.
(2) Georges Bernanos, Freedom, for what?Madrid 1989, 91-92.
(3) Sermon ” The Drum Major Instinct”(February 4, 1968).
Papa Francisco
Pope Francis, born on December 17, 1936 in Buenos Aires (Argentina), is the first Latin American Pope in the history of the Catholic Church, assuming the papacy on March 13, 2013. His close style and his emphasis on mercy They have left a distinctive brand in their pontificate.