Secretariat for Communication: theme for WDSC2017, “learning to communicate hope and trust in history”

“An invitation to tell the story of the world and the stories of men and women based on the logic of the ‘good news’ which reminds us that God never renounces being a Father, in any situation and with any man. Let us learn how to communicate trust and hope in history”. In this way, the Secretariat for Communication presented the theme chosen by Pope Francis for the World Day for Social Communications 2017 (WDSC2017): “‘Fear not, for I am with you’ (Is 43:5). Communicating hope and trust in our time”. As the Secretariat explained illustrating the choice of the theme, “having a numb conscience and succumbing to despair are two possible diseases that may be triggered by the current communication system. It is possible that our consciences become numb, as Pope Francis recalled in his Encyclical ‘Laudato si’, due to the fact that professionals, opinion makers, and communications media are often located in urban areas far removed from the poor, with little direct contact with their problems. And such physical distance often leads to indifference to the complexity of the dramatic situations experienced by men and women. Despair, on the other hand, is likely to arise when communication is pushed to the extremes, sensationalised, and sometimes turned into a real strategy to build immediate threats and looming fears”. In this “noise”, however, – the Secretariat continued – “a whisper is heard: ‘Fear not, for I am with you’. In His Son, God has become close to every man, He has revealed to us that we are not alone, for we have a Father who never forgets His children. Those who live united with Christ come to realise that even darkness and death can become, for those who want it, a place of communion with the Light and the Life. In every situation, they try to understand what happens between God and humanity, until they see how He Himself, through the dramatic situations of our world, is writing the history of salvation. We Christians have a ‘good news’ to tell, for we contemplate with hope the horizon of the Kingdom”. Hence we are invited to learn to “communicate hope and trust in history”.