“Speaking with the Heart: Veritatem Facientes in Caritate” is the Theme for World Communications Day 2023, the Holy See Press Office announced yesterday.
Newsroom (04/10/2022 11:15 PM, Gaudium Press) The theme, which compliments that of 2022 – “Listening with the ear of the heart” – is intended to lead the Church to the celebration of the Synod in October 2023.
Speaking from the heart, according to the communiqué, means giving “a reason for your hope,” and doing so with kindness, “using the gift of communication as a bridge and not a wall.”
It is an invitation to go against the grain in a moment characterized by polarization and heated debates that escalate tempers – even in church life.
Speaking the Truth with a Style of Mercy
The theme also invites everyone not to “fear to declare the, sometimes uncomfortable, truth that finds its foundation in the Gospel.
This proclamation, must not be separated from “a style of mercy, of honest sharing in the joys and sufferings of the people of our time,“. This is shown in the dialogue between the mysterious traveler and the disciples of Emmaus in the Bible.
Non-Hostile Communication
In the current context of conflicts in different regions of the globe, the theme affirms the importance of non-hostile communication.
Thus, it promotes, “a communication open to dialogue with the other, that favors ‘integral disarmament,’ that strives to dismantle the ‘psychosis of war’ that nests in our hearts,” as St. John XXIII prophetically exhorted sixty years ago in Pacem in Terris.
In this way, everyone, and in particular those who work in the field of communication, are called to exercise their profession “as a mission to build a more just, more fraternal and more human future.
Nominations
Pope Francis yesterday appointed to the Dicastery for Communications two new members, Brazilian bishop Monsignor Valdir José de Castro, S.S.P., of the Diocese of Campo Limpo, former Superior General of the Society of St. Paul, and Archbishop Ivan Maffeis, Archbishop of Perugia-Città delle Pieve (Italy), and 10 new consultants.
With information from Vatican News
Compiled by Florence MacDonald
