Explaining the pope’s 57th World Communications Day message and his quest for global peace
By Justine John Dyikuk
Pope Francis has reminded people everywhere to build a civilization of love amid dissensions, wars, and polarisation of truth. This was contained in his message for the 57th world day of social communications titled, “Speaking with the heart: The truth in love” (Eph. 4:15). The pope’s 13-paragraph message which was given in Rome, Saint John Lateran, on 24 January 2023, the Memorial of Saint Francis de Sales underscored the need for “speaking with the heart” noting that “It is the heart that spurred us to go, to see and to listen, and it is the heart that moves us towards an open and welcoming way of communicating.”
This year, World Communications Sunday fell on May 21. On this day, the pope’s message is read throughout the Catholic world. Aside from taking home lessons on improving human communication through speaking with a listing heart in love and truth, the people of God are urged to make contributions for propagating the faith through traditional and social media.
Listening demands waiting, patience
Stressing the crucial need for “communicating in a cordial way,” he explained that listening with the heart entails waiting, patience and dialoguing in a way that invites participants to avoid prejudicial points of view. According to him, although we are called to listen to others with “a pure heart,” we must accompany that with charity to arrive at the truth. Do “not be afraid of proclaiming the truth, even if it is at times uncomfortable,” he said.
The pope described the function of the heart as revealing “the truth of our being” hence the need to for us to listen to it. Further highlighting the role of the heart, the message reads: “This leads those who listen to attune themselves to the same wave length, to the point of being able to hear within their heart also the heartbeat of the other. Then the miracle of encounter can take place, which makes us look at one another with compassion, welcoming our mutual frailties with respect rather than judging by hearsay and sowing discord and division.”
Pope Francis who cited “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth flows,” urged everyone to communicate with purify of heart. He exhorted players in “the field of information” to seek discernment even as they eschew indifference, indignation and “disinformation which falsifies and exploits the truth.”
Kindness unlocks hardened hearts
According to him, “listening with the heart” implies an openness to communicate cordially as active participants “in the joys, fears, hopes and suffering of the women and men of our time.” Citing love as the basis of caring and protecting other people’s “freedom without violating it,” the pope used the analogy of the stranger who accompanies the disciples on the way to stress that: “The Risen Jesus speaks to them with the heart, accompanying the journey of their suffering with respect, proposing himself and not imposing himself, lovingly opening their minds to understand the profound meaning of what had happened.”
He drew the attention of the world to the fact that this kind of dialogue is not an exclusive reserve for “those in the field of communications” noting that the commitment to communication is an open invitation to all to communicate with others “with open heart and arms.” World communication Sunday becomes an opportunity to “speak the truth – with charity” using our tongue to “bless” and not “curse.” Stressing that kindness and friendly conversations could serve as a “genuine antidote to cruelty, which unfortunately can poison hearts and make relationships toxic,” the message maintained that “We need it in the field of media, so that communication does not foment acrimony that exasperates, creates rage and leads to clashes, but helps people peacefully reflect and interpret with a critical yet always respectful spirit, the reality in which they live.”
Communicating and loving well like Francis de Sales
The 57th World Day of Communications highlighted the heroic role of the brilliant Christian writer, doctor of the Church and patron saint of journalists, Francis de Sales. He singled out the Bishop of Geneva for worthy mention due to his doggedness and sense of equanimity in dialogue with the Calvinists saying, “His meek attitude, humanity and willingness to dialogue patiently with everyone, especially with those who disagreed with him, made him an extraordinary witness of God’s merciful love.” Referring to him as an apostle of “listening with the heart” and “loving well,” Francis made the point that his works and life had inspired others like Saint John Newman and his deaf-mute friend Martin making him “the protector of people with impairments in communicating.”
With “criterion of love,” Pope Francis seems to suggest that Francis de Sales reminds us that “we are what we communicate.” In a world where social media is polarised and manipulated, the pope invites us to emulate the “journalistic intuition” of this saintly man by reflecting his values of communicating and loving well in our articles, reports, television or radio programmes or social media posts. This will enable “those who work in communications feel inspired by this saint of tenderness, seeking and telling the truth with courage and freedom and rejecting the temptation to use sensational and combative expressions” the pope said.
A synodal process nurtured by closeness, compassion
Considering the current synodal process, Francis envisages “speaking according to God’s style, nurtured by closeness, compassion and tenderness.” He underlined the “pressing need in the Church for communication that kindles hearts, that is balm on wounds and that shines light on the journey of our brothers and sisters.”
On top of that, sounding like the cerebral American human rights’ activist, Martin Luther King, the 86-year-old, said:
“I dream of an ecclesial communication that knows how to let itself be guided by the Holy Spirit, gentle and at the same time, prophetic, that knows how to find new ways and means for the wonderful proclamation it is called to deliver in the third millennium.
“A communication which puts the relationship with God and one’s neighbour, especially the neediest, at the centre and which knows how to light the fire of faith rather than preserve the ashes of a self-referential identity. A form of communication founded on humility in listening and parrhesia in speaking, which never separates truth from charity.”
Entrenching the language of peace
With the words, “speaking with the heart is essential to foster a culture of peace in places where there is war; to open paths that allow for dialogue and reconciliation in places where hatred and enmity rage,” his holiness seems to be referring to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine when he emphasized that: “In the dramatic context of the global conflict we are experiencing, it is urgent to maintain a form of communication that is not hostile.” As if talking to Vladimir Putin, Francis stressed:
“As was the case sixty years ago, we are now also living in a dark hour in which humanity fears an escalation of war that must be stopped as soon as possible, also at the level of communication.
“It is terrifying to hear how easily words calling for the destruction of people and territories are spoken. Words, unfortunately, that often turn into warlike actions of heinous violence.”
In no uncertain terms, he demanded that: “This is why all belligerent rhetoric must be rejected, as well as every form of propaganda that manipulates the truth, disfiguring it for ideological ends.”
He goes ahead to provide a portent panacea by stating that: “What must be promoted is a form of communication that helps create the conditions to resolve controversies between peoples. It is necessary to overcome the tendency to “discredit and insult opponents from the outset [rather] than to open a respectful dialogue.”
Citing Saint John XXIII’s Encyclical Pacem in Terris, “True peace can only be built in mutual trust” (No. 113), the successor of Peter unequivocally said, “We need communicators who are open to dialogue, engaged in promoting integral disarmament and committed to undoing the belligerent psychosis that nests in our hearts.” He insists that this involves a “bold and creative” trust where participants are “ready to take risks to find common ground on which to meet.”
Conclusion
In driving home his message, Francis reminds Christians that they have a “destiny” with “peace” which calls for “conversion of hearts” and eradicating “the virus of war – from within the human heart.” He is optimistic that “the right words” can “dispel the shadows of a closed and divided world” towards building “a civilization [of love] which is better than the one we have received.” The pope enjoined those in the “field of communications” to have a sense of responsibility seeing “their profession as a mission.” He prayed God to “help us to make our communication clear, open and heartfelt” just as we “disarm the hostility that divides” us and “speak the truth in charity” as “protectors of one another.”
Justine John Dyikuk, a Catholic priest, is a Lecturer of Mass Communication, University of Jos; editor – Caritas Newspaper; and convener of Media Team Network Initiative, Nigeria.
