The Office of Communication, with Sister Solange W., Sara M. and Sister Paola A. participated in the three intense Roman days dedicated to the Jubilee of Communicators, which kicked off the long series of Jubilees of the different “categories” that will follow, up to the Jubilee of Prisoners on December 14, 2025, which will close the circle opened with the Holy Door at the Rebibbia Prison on December 26 of the previous year.
From the very first event in which we took part – the penitential liturgy at St. John Lateran on Friday, January 24 – we felt called upon as communication workers: the penitential liturgy was led by Father Giulio Albanese, director of the Office for Social Communications of the Vicariate of Rome, and followed by the international Mass of the liturgical memory of St. Francis de Sales, patron of all communication workers, presided over by Cardinal Baldo Reina, vicar general of the Pope for the diocese of Rome.
We heard addressed to each of us in the Office of Communication the Gospel page recalled by Card. Reina: Jesus is reached by news. There is a woman caught in flagrante adultery, but Jesus does not focus on the news, but he asks where is the hope in the face of the fact that is presented to him?
Jesus does not take the woman’s side to justify her, nor does he take the side of those who had put her in front of him to nullify the law, but he goes into the heart of that woman, tries to sense the beauty, the preciousness of that heart that is far greater than the mistakes she has made. And finally, Jesus offers the adulteress a horizon of hope, and that will be the Jubilee of the adulteress. And so, if we also want to celebrate our Jubilee as the world of communication, let us embrace this style that Jesus offers us.
So the three of us, too, wanted to ask for the grace to celebrate our Jubilee, with its most poignant moment during the following morning, “pilgrims of hope,” at 7. 30 on Saturday, Jan. 25, the day of the Conversion of St. Paul, another great communicator, we went through the Holy Door: like Jesus with the adulterous woman, may our communication go beyond ourselves, our schemes, our stereotypes, to proclaim that the Kingdom of God is near and comes to us and comes in the attention we pay to people, before news and articles, in the care we take in listening to others, through their written contributions and photos, in reading reality and in telling it.
Our pilgrimage then continued to another stage: the proclamation, together with many other communication workers, of the Apostolic Creed before the Altar of Confession in St. Peter’s Basilica.
We know that this Jubilee of Communication is the first in the history of the Catholic Church.
With us, were “present” all those – sisters, lay people, volunteers, families, colleagues, collaborators, translators, photographers… – who help us in our service, to create communion and bridges of dialogue in the sixth continent, the digital one.
Sister Paula A.
