“An opportunity to forge contacts, listen to everyone’s concerns and share experiences two months after my election”, said Bishop Jean-Michel Di Falco Leandri of Gap (France), who since January has chaired the CEEM (European Bishops’ Committee for the Media, one of the bodies promoted by the CCEE), in summing up in a briefing to SIR the results of the CEEM meeting held at Gap in recent days, the first since he assumed his new post. Central focal point of the meeting was “the planning of our plenary, i.e. the meeting of the bishop members of all the European bishops’ committees for the media, which we provisionally agreed to hold in Lithuania – if the Archbishop of Vilnius, Cardinal Audrys Backis, gives his assent – in May or more probably in November this year. The programme of work for the next five years will be presented on that occasion”. “We chose Lithuania – explained the President of the CEEM – because we acknowledged the need for the country to organize a language group. In fact language barriers sometimes persist even where there’s cultural affinity”. “With the participants in the meeting we discussed the difficulties and projects of each, as also aspects we can share, such as the realization of joint radio programmes and TV productions, with the aim of creating synergies between the various countries that now compose Europe”. The main priority, according to Bishop Di Falco, “is to establish language groups in the regions where they still do not exist, for example in the countries of Eastern Europe, or to consolidate the one that has recently been established in Great Britain”. The importance of the media in people’s lives is now universally recognized – concluded the CEEM President -, and the Church must be present in the world of the means of communication in an active and effective way to propagate the message she wishes to send out”.
