Neighbourhood press

“A neighbourhood press, modest in relation to the scale of its mission” but “firmly rooted” in society, and “willing to listen to and enter into dialogue with the reality” of the world today, with a view to a “genuine proclamation of the Gospel”: that, in essence, is the character of the “local Christian press” in France, according to the national Federation of the Local Christian Press (FNPLC). The President of the Italian Federation of Catholic Weeklies (FISC), don Giorgio Zucchelli, has for his part presented Italy’s diocesan weeklies as a whole as “a very significant field of communication of the Italian Church, which has great power to form opinions”. Below we provide a presentation of both these Federations, expressions of a free press and close to the territory they serve, and at the same time valid means of evangelization.In France. Founded in 1976, the FNPLC is an umbrella organization that represents some 2000 regional, diocesan and parish magazines (monthlies, bimonthlies, quarterlies), with an annual print run of some 20 million copies. It recently published a document with the title “The local Christian press at the heart of people’s life – convictions and challenges”. “The Church is communication; it is sign”, declares the Most Rev. Jean-Michel di Falco Leandri, Bishop of Gap and President of the National Council for Communication and of the CEEM (Commission of the European Episcopates for the Media), in his preface to the document. The Church, therefore, must not limit herself “to informing”, but must “also respond to the mission of bearing witness to the ‘good news’ of the Gospel in a society in which the media speak mainly of bad news”. According to the bishop, parish magazines play an important role in communication: that of “smaller cogs in the mechanism, but they too indispensable for the efficient functioning” of a clock. He therefore urges pastors: “Don’t forget that for many readers of a parish magazine, this is the only link that unites them with the Church”. Parish magazines, emphasizes the document, are both “a local press” and “a means of missionary pastoral work” through which “editors, publishers and ordained ministers truthfully ‘translate’ the Gospel into the circumstances of daily life”. This local Catholic press however, warns the Federation, cannot survive “unless proper funding is regularly provided”. This is an “essential element”, and to ensure it “all possible means need to be studied for a reasonable financial budget” because it is in essence “an investment, not a cost”. Faced by the “crisis of society”, continues the document, “people have a need to discover a missionary Church that welcomes, proposes and celebrates”. The local Christian press “must reach out where the other media don’t go and give a voice to those who don’t have one; it must speak of things that the other media pass over in silence; it must take an interest in everything that really touches closely on the life of its readers”. This “is what neighbourhood means”. Training of professionals of communication, drafting of an “editorial charter” that defines editorial policy, objectives and means to realize it, and fund-raising are the priorities indicated by the document for the efficient functioning of a system that “is mainly founded on volunteer service”. In Italy. 168 diocesan weeklies, with a print run of a million copies per week, are associated in the Italian Federation (FISC), founded in 1966. To these we need to add numerous parish magazines and other periodicals. Don Zucchelli, the Federation’s President, defines them comprehensively as “sources of information that recount the whole reality of a territory, adopting a gospel viewpoint, serving the truth and refusing any form of conditioning”. He further makes the point that “in today’s globalized world people increasingly feel the need” for “a return to the local dimension”. Italian Catholic weeklies”, explains the FISC President, are “one of the main means of the “Cultural Project” launched by the Italian Church in 1995 “as a response to the diffusion of radical secular culture” in our time. Therefore, apart from constituting “structural elements of evangelization” and “vanguards in mission”, their task, today as in the future, “will be fundamental for promoting a calm and reasonable counter-information”. This is “a duty for which Catholic weeklies must increasingly be reinforced, but it is also an opportunity”: “the chance to finally ‘liberate’ people’s thought, subjugated and marginalized by powerful forces”. Pointing out the vital role played by diocesan weeklies as “critical public conscience” and “forum for the active presence and promotion of the various social protagonists”, the FISC President also stresses the need for them to adopt a position “on national political and local administrative decisions”, expressing “with courage the point of view of gospel values and championing the common good”. And all this is happening also thanks to their news agency, the SIR, Servizio Informazione Religiosa , founded in 1989 and present for 8 years in Europe with a daily and twice-weekly news service.