Promote truth, promote faith, Pope urges Catholic journalists
October 07, 2010
"Catholic journalists must seek the truth with impassioned minds and hearts,” Pope Benedict XVI told a group of journalists at a private audience on October 7.
Greeting the participants in a Vatican conference on the challenges of contemporary journalism, organized by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, the Holy Father reflected on the dangers of media coverage that can often treat an event “as a mere spectacle and not as an occasion for reflection.” At times, he said, such coverage “may distance us from the real world and not stimulate us to seek reality, to seek the truth.” Catholic journalists must resist that impulse and strive to pursue the truth honestly, he said.
The Pope emphasized the importance of using words accurately to convey the real truth. "The Word of God came to man and was handed down to us though a book: the Bible,” he said. “The word remains the fundamental and, in a certain sense, the essential instrument of communication.”
Catholic journalists have a special responsibility to promote the faith in an often hostile culture, the Pontiff continued. He said that this requires an active commitment to promote the Gospel and combat the influence of secularization: “Christians cannot ignore the crisis of faith that has invested society, or simply hope that the heritage of values handed down over past centuries may continue to inspire and mould the future of the human family.”
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