Jubilee 2025: ‘The real challenge today is to communicate hope’
In Rome, from 22 to 24 January, at the Università della S. Croce, which is also the promoter, the 14th professional seminar for Church offices of communication was held, organised by the Faculty of Communication of the same, on the theme: ‘Communication and evangelisation: context, attitudes, experiences’.
Ms Ilaria Iadeluca, Ms Giulia Giannarini and Mr Fabio Parente, as the team of the Institute’s Office of Information and Communication, took part in the three days of study and work.
On the afternoon of Wednesday 22 January, Mgr. Rino Fisichella, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelisation and coordinator of the Jubilee 2025 events, opened the conference, speaking of “fostering an open dialogue between theologians, communication professionals and pastoral workers, emphasising the importance of contexts, technologies and testimonies for an effective and innovative evangelisation”. Archbishop Fisichella also reflected on the need to reconsider communication models, because “the real challenge today is to communicate hope”, not failing to point out that the working days coincided with the Feast of St. Francis de Sales, the Patron saint of journalists.
The meeting brought together some 600 participants, including communicators from dioceses, bishops’ conferences, religious institutes, movements and other Church-related entities. The main topics of the seminar included the challenges posed by digital culture and the so-called ‘attention economy’, with speeches highlighting the need to adapt Church communication to new languages and media.
The Language of the Church
Among the many authoritative figures and experts in the field of religious communication and beyond, we had Fr. Paul-Adrien, Dominican and youtuber, who reflected on how to deal today, from the perspective of modern communication, with issues what were hidden in the past; Fr. Fabio Rosini, a young theologian priest and author of spirituality, who with very simple and captivating language captured the attention of those present by investigating modern communication practices and how important it is that the language of the Church evolves to reach young people.
The masterclasses and various parallel in-depth sessions were also praiseworthy, designed as a valid offer of multiple topics from which to choose to reinforce, probe and examine knowledge and curiosities. Thus we moved from the topic How to convert a faith story into a quality video, by Juan Martin Ezratty (producer and CEO of ‘Digito Identidad Visual’) to an analysis on the topic: Priests and religious on the Internet: what to do and what not to do, by Fr. José Enrique Garcia Rizo (communicator of the Claretian missionaries) and Juan Narbona (lecturer in Digital Communication). In both cases it is key to discern the institutional approach to social media versus a personal or even intimate one, which must not be confused and overlapped.
D. Luca Peyron and Giovanni Tridente, in one of the final afternoon sessions, analysed the risks and opportunities of artificial intelligence.
Among the special events to which some journalists were also admitted, on Friday 24 January in the Aula Magna ‘John Paul II’, the presentation and screening of some scenes from the musical ‘Bernadette de Lourdes’, accompanied by a meeting with the producers and actors, should be mentioned.
At the end of the event, we cannot fail to mention the speech by the Pope, who in the Paul VI Hall on Saturday 25 January, during his address to the participants in the Jubilee of Communication, emphasised how ‘to communicate is to go out a little from oneself to give mine to the other. And communication is not only the going out, but also the encounter with the other. Knowing how to communicate is a great wisdom!” He also described himself as happy with this Jubilee of communicators, because ‘your work (as communicators) is work that builds: it builds society, it builds the Church, it moves everyone forward, as long as it is true’