He praises their work, but also asks them to be more careful with money. The Pope, in the audience at the Dicastery for Communication, talks about the economic problems of the Holy See and, explains to the participants, «we will have to do a little more discipline with money because you have to look for ways to save more and look for other funds , because the Holy See cannot continue to help you as it is now. I know it’s bad news but it’s good news because it moves everyone’s creativity.” Francis explains that he is “happy to know that, despite the economic difficulties and the need to reduce expenses, you have worked hard to increase the offer of the over fifty languages in which the Vatican media communicate”. And he adds that «with your work and your creativity, with the intelligent use of the means that technology makes available, but above all with your heart, you are called to a great and exciting task: that of building bridges, when so many they build walls; that of promoting communion, when so many foment division; that of getting involved in the tragedies of our time, when so many prefer indifference.”
Explaining that communication “is a vocation and a mission!” he adds that «in every expression of our community life, we are called to reverberate that divine love which in Christ has attracted and attracts us. And this is what characterizes ecclesial belonging: if we reasoned and acted according to political or corporate categories, we would not be the Church. This isn’t right. If we applied worldly criteria or if we reduced our structures to bureaucracy, we would not be the Church. Being Church means living in the awareness that the Lord loves us first, calls us first, forgives us first.”
All this, he explains, has to do with the work of communicators and journalists because «precisely as communicators, in fact, you are called to weave ecclesial communion with the truth around your waist, justice as armour, your feet shod and ready to propagate the Gospel of peace”.