Communication
“To pass from the culture of the adjective to the theology of the noun”. This is, for Pope Francis, the secret to an “authentically Christian” communication. In his off-the-cuff remarks to the members of the Dicastery for Communications, Pope Francis lamented that the “culture” of the adjective “has entered the Church”, and that we all “forget to be brothers and sisters”. “Your communication should be austere but beautiful”, the Pope suggested. Beauty, he explained, “is not rococo; beauty manifests itself from the noun”. Being Christian communicators thus means “communicating by witness, communicating by involving oneself in communication, communicating with the nouns of things, communicating as martyrs, that is, as witnesses of Christ. It means learning the language of the martyrs, the language of the Apostles”. Pope Francis also decried the “resignation that so often enters the hearts of Christians: we see the world in a pagan way”. “The climate of worldliness is not something new in the 21st century. It has always been a danger”, the Pope explained, warning against this “temptation”. “We should not be ashamed of being few in number, we should not be afraid of the future of the Church”, he said. “We are a Church of a few, but as leaven”. Resignation, cultural defeat, comes from bad spirit, the complaint of resignation”. “Yes, we are few, but with the desire for ‘mission’, to show others who we are, with our witness”, Pope Francis stated, citing the example of St Francis who would send his brothers to preach, telling them: “Preach the Gospel, if necessary, also with words”.
