Pope Francis thanked Vatican journalists, whom he referred to as his “travel companions,” for their passion and “hard work,” especially when they respectfully report on “scandals of the Church.”
Early in the morning of this Monday, January 22, about 150 members of the International Association of Journalists Accredited in the Vatican (AIGAV) were received by the Holy Father in the Clementine Room of the Apostolic Palace.
The group of journalists accredited to the Holy See, “a community united by a mission” according to the Pontiff, were received at the Vatican for the first time since the founding of this association.
After being received by widespread applause, Pope Francis highlighted the “passion” of these information professionals, as well as their “love for what they report” and their “hard work” in the service of truth.
For the Holy Father, “being a journalist is a vocation, like that of a doctor, who chooses to love humanity by treating its illnesses” and touching “the wounds of society and the world.”
He also recalled that this vocation “is a call that comes from youth” and therefore urged them to return “to the roots of their vocation.”
“How much need to know and tell, on the one hand, and how much need to cultivate an unconditional love for the truth,” he noted.
Pope Francis also highlighted the patience of Vaticanists to follow day after day the news that comes from the Holy See, trying to relate “an institution that transcends the here and now, and our own lives.”
Vaticanists often accompany the Holy Father on his apostolic journeys, and for this reason, the Pontiff thanked them for their “sacrifices in following the Pope around the world and often working even on Sundays and holidays.”
In this sense, he apologized “for the times that the news that worries me in different ways has kept you away from your families, from playing with your children” and also from spending time with your husbands or wives.
According to the Pontiff, this meeting is “an occasion to reflect on the Vaticanist’s tiring task of telling the path of the Church, of building bridges of knowledge and communication instead of furrows of division and mistrust.”
Later, he recalled the words of the veteran Vaticanist of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Luigi Accattoli, who highlighted that, in leading this work, it is possible to learn “the art of searching for and telling life stories, which is a way of loving the man”.
Citing Saint Paul VI, the Pontiff pointed out that a Vatican journalist “should not be guided, as sometimes happens, by criteria that classify the things of the Church according to profane and political categories, which do not adapt to the things themselves, that is, “Moreover, they often distort them, but must take into account what truly informs the life of the Church, that is, its religious and moral purposes and its characteristic spiritual qualities.”
He then highlighted “the delicacy that you so often have when speaking about scandals in the Church: I have seen in you a great delicacy, a respect”, also in the face of the often “shameful” silence.
Next, Pope Francis thanked them again for their effort to maintain the gaze “that knows how to see behind appearances, that knows how to grasp the substance, that does not want to bow to the superficiality of stereotypes and the pre-established formulas of information-spectacle. ”.
He also encouraged them to “continue on this path that knows how to combine information with reflection, words with listening, discernment with love.”
He also emphasized the difficulty of this work, while explaining that “the greatness of the Vaticanist lies in the subtlety of soul that is added to journalistic skill.”
From the majestic Clementine Hall, the Holy Father highlighted that “the beauty of your work around Peter is to found it on the solid rock of responsibility in truth, not on the fragile sands of gossip and ideological readings.”
He specified that this “lies in not hiding reality and also its miseries, without sweetening tensions but at the same time without making unnecessary clamor, but striving to capture what is essential, in light of the nature of the Church.”
Finally, Pope Francis asked the journalists to pray for him and later greeted them personally one by one.