Every Priest is a Communicator

Every priest is a communicator. That's according to the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Irish Monsignor Paul Tighe. He was speaking in the context of the recent 44th World Day of Social Communications, whose motto was ""The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word."

“Its very clear that the priest is at the core of his vocation, a communicator. One of the jobs that a priest does in any parish is to promote communications within the parish. But very specially he is the one who is charged with bringing the word of God into that parish. So as a communicator we hope that a priest, as somebody who having listened to and encountered the Word of God himself can then bring that and share it with other people”.

The recent emphasis is on new technology, which enables the Church to expand the boundaries of the Good News.

“The recent emphasis of course is on the development of the new technologies. And the new technologies means that priests have the possibility to reach people they maybe would not have had the opportunity to reach. So we traditionally think of the parish as something that is geographically limited. Nowadays we can think of a more universal parish where the priest who decides to make available his preaching, to make available his ideas, can reach people in different corners of the world. And we want to encourage priests to take advantage of this new technology, to share the Word of God: to bring their message, their insight into the Word of God to the lives of different people”.

Training begins in the seminary.

“So one of the things that we are doing at the Pontifical Council is, we are encouraging that there will be more attention to communcations in Seminary Programs throughout the world. Not just about teaching people technologies or the art of technical communcations. But they become people who, having really listened to the Word of God, become people who bring that Word to the lives of different people”.