Communicating the faith. This is the number one priority, as it is outlined in the “Instrumentum Laboris” of the next extraordinary synod on the family. Amid strong points of view, some of which can be discarded at a political level (the ones the secular media have been writing about), the Instrumentum Laboris is [...]
As the establishing of a Secretariat for Communication among the offices of the Roman Curia seems imminent, the closing of a missionary magazine has again led to questions about the very communication of faith to the peripheries of the world, Pope Francis’ favorite theme. While communications are ever more professionalized (a needed [...]
Perhaps a Pope coming from the ends of the world was needed to put an end to the so-called “Italian exception”. Id est, that privileged relationship between Italy and the Holy See that tightly linked the two banks of the Tiber. The relation was tight because of geography: Rome is in Italy, and [...]
Last Monday, Pope Francis was the first Pope to deliver the inaugural speech of the General Assembly of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. The Pope asked the Italian bishops to change the statutes, to make them more democratic, being this Conference the only one in the world whose president is directly elected by the [...]
The highlight of the circumscribed press release about the meeting between Pope Francis and the U.S. president Barack Obama is that both parties affirm their mutual commitment to bring an end to the plague of the human trafficking. Human trafficking seems to be Pope Francis’ most important diplomatic challenge. Yes, there had been [...]
The evolution of Vatican communication under Pope Francis can eventually “rehabilitate” the Benedict XVI’ pontificate, which had been at least undermined by a certain kind of media narrative. There are two peculiar examples on how the Vatican communication became more pro-active, handling problems in the most proper way and trying [...]
It was probably not by chance that Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical Household, dedicated the first of his Advent presentations to the Roman Curia to the theme of the reform of the Church. He did so from a particular angle: that of Francis of Assisi, of his extraordinary conversion and [...]
The Church according to Pope Francis is outlined in the nearly 260 page-long Apostolic Exhortation «Evangelii Gaudium» (The Joy of the Gospel), that he wrote in two weeks in Spanish (with some neologisms and slogans) with a clear core message: the Church must come out, to the streets, and announce the Gospel [...]