THE VATICAN: The communications media had "acquired such importance as to be the principal means of guidance and inspiration for many people in their personal, familial, and social behaviour," Pope John Paul has said.
In an Apostolic Letter published yesterday on technology in the media, titled Rapid Development, he continued: "ours is an age of global communication in which countless moments of human existence are either spent with, or at least confronted by, the different processes of the mass media."
The mass media "can and must promote justice and solidarity according to an organic and correct vision of human development, by reporting events accurately and truthfully, analysing situations and problems completely, and providing a forum for different opinions.
"An authentically ethical approach to using the powerful communication media must be situated within the context of a mature exercise of freedom and responsibility, founded upon the supreme criteria of truth and justice," he said.
Proclaiming the gospel was "certainly not an easy mission in an age such as ours, in which there exists the conviction that the time of certainties is irretrievably past.
"Many people, in fact, believe that humanity must learn to live in a climate governed by an absence of meaning, by the provisional and by the fleeting.
"In this context, the communications media can be used to proclaim the Gospel or to reduce it to silence within men's hearts."
A vast work of formation was needed to assure that the mass media be known and used intelligently and appropriately, the Pope said, while a culture of co-responsibility must also be nurtured.
