A European construction site for religious information ” “

“A construction site for religious information”: that’s the image used to evaluate the first year in the activity of SirEurope (a weekly online news bulletin, in three languages) at the meetings of the general secretaries and spokespersons of the European Episcopal Conferences held in recent days respectively at Istanbul in Turkey and near Ljubljana in Slovenia. Twelve months have gone by since the presentation of the project for the new European service at Bonn and Prague and at that time the same representatives as today asked what was meant by the SIR acronym. In the great debate on Europe and for Europe the thought of Catholics, in growing dialogue with that of other Christians, is now able to enjoy a presence that intends to make words, voices and images come more vividly to life by expressing itself in a different way. This intention takes the form of the transmission of ideas and concepts alongside the communication of facts and faces, because together they may better express the reciprocal quest for faith and reason, culture and Gospel, spirituality and active charity. In this perspective, or rather in this “construction site”, the theme of the Christian roots of Europe is powerfully re-emerging: it is no longer running the risk of being relegated to the archives as a page of history from the past. Instead it is entering the current debate on the future of Europe: a page still to be written to give grounds for a hope that also challenges the media. In fidelity to this hope, an enduring one, there is no presumption to teach, still less to judge: the choice of the Catholic media, including SIR, through SirEurope, is to be at the side of non-Catholic media, in the interests of a common professionalism that does not exclude from the news what is real, though it be invisible. In the difficult transition lies the full significance of a religious information service which – as more than once emphasized – has its horizons open to the experience of the Church, but also to the daily actions and thoughts of the man in the street, of the citizen, and of the institutions that represent him. It is not an easy task, nor is it always shared. Yet it is the only one that leads us to interpret and recount man in all his dimensions and the Church as “another “reality, yet one that is firmly placed within written and yet-to-be-written history. In realizing together with other European Catholic media a project founded on reciprocal esteem, on the pooling of different sensibilities and on the synergy between different functions, we are conscious that this enterprise is only possible, and can only bear fruit, if experienced in constant harmony with a Christian community that speaks of roots, but also of source and branches; a Christian community that is anxious to dialogue with the various cultures and religions, to communicate the Gospel with courage, and to denounce, in the Gospel’s name, the injustice, the violations of rights and of the dignity of the person committed in Europe and, at times, committed by the European continent itself in the world. It is significant, therefore, that the European Catholic press agencies are also beginning to be present in SIR’s “construction site”, as are also numerous journalists, men and women of thought who express the various sensibilities and hopes of the West and East of Europe. The direction seems the right one, even if a “European editorial team” still remains a dream: at least for the time being.