News Reports Can Enhance “ecological ethics”: Vatican Official to Eastern Africa Bishops

“Communication has the task of reminding us to highlight the intrinsic links between human destiny and the environment in order to generate accountable citizens and true stewards on the planet, and not only consumers,” he added. 

Making reference to Pope Francis’ Encyclical Letter, Laudato Si, Dr. Ruffini said, “The role of communication in building or destroying a responsible awareness about the crisis of our space and time, nourishing the country’s is to promote a responsible awareness.”

He went on to highlight the role of the media in the common mission of protecting the environment, saying, “Media can stop people from learning how to live wisely, to think deeply and to love generously... Efforts need to be made to help these media become sources of new cultural progress for humanity and not a threat to our deepest riches.”

The head of the Dicastery for Communication added, “Radio is a very powerful media, which for most of the countries in Africa still plays a very important role. In some of your countries, almost every diocese has a Catholic radio station, which also re-transmit our daily bulletins from the Vatican Radio.”

“Through the radio, through the web, through social media we can build a system with the mission of spreading the word of truth, based on the experience of Pentecost interwoven with the spirit of sharing – instead of that of Babel,” he said in his address to the Plenary Assembly that has brought together more than 100 Catholic Bishops from the nine AMECEA countries.

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Dr. Ruffini further said that “communication is not a one-way process but reciprocal whereby listening to another another’s experiences and stories becomes part and parcel of authentic social communication.”

He urged delegates drawn from the nine AMECEA countries that include Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia to foster a collaborative ministry, saying, “Unity is strength, division is weakness”.

The most difficult task for any media, Dr. Ruffini said, is “to build a relational system capable of collecting, organizing, networking, communicating, sharing the good, and the beauty of the truth.”

“Every believer has to allow the message to travel from one person to another because it is beautiful, because it is true, beautiful because it is personally experienced, beautiful because it tells of the beauty of God,” he said.

The Vatican official added during his July 12 address, “Communication is not a superstructure, neither is it just a craft. Rather, it is the truth of a true relationship; where each one knows he can count on the other.”