Pope Francis has chosen the single word, “Listen!” as the theme for the 56th World Communications Day, which will be celebrated in 2022. Announcing this year’s theme, the Holy See says, “Pope Francis is asking the world to listen again.”
After the Message of 2021, which focused on going and seeing, in his new Message for World Communications Day 2022 Pope Francis asks the world of communication to learn to listen again.
The pandemic has affected and wounded everyone, and everyone needs to be heard and comforted. Listening is also fundamental for good information. The search for truth begins with listening. And so does witnessing through the means of social communication. Every dialogue, every relationship begins with listening. For this reason, in order to grow, even professionally, as communicators, we need to relearn to listen a lot.
Jesus himself asks us to pay attention to how we listen (cf. Lk 8:18). To be able to truly listen requires courage, and a free and open heart, without prejudice.
At this time when the whole Church is invited to listen in order to learn to be a synodal Church, we are all invited to rediscover listening as essential for good communication.
Pope Paul VI held the first World Communications Day in 1967 on the theme “Church and Social Communication.”
“The Church, realizing ‘that she is truly and intimately linked with mankind and its history’ (1), wishes by means of this initiative, proposed by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, to draw the attention of her children and of all men of good will to the vast and complex phenomenon of the modem means of social communication, such as the press, motion pictures, radio, and television, which form one of the most characteristic notes of modern civilization,” Paul VI wrote in that first communications day message.
(1) Constitutio Pastoralis de Ecclesia in mindo huius temporis prooemium.
