OPEN QUESTIONS IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM

Nino Rizzo Nervo

Director of the "Regional Journalistic Head of RAI"

I would say that the Jubilee is already present in public opinion as a great event of the millennium's end. It is an affirmation which is not based on anything scientific. I do not have at my disposition surveys or analyses, but my experience and that of my colleagues who are faithfully following the event, which lead me to think that the Jubilee event is already very present in the consciousness of Christians in the various regions of Italy. The Jubilee is perceived in all its majesty as an event which carries meaning both as a great feast of Christianity 2000 years after the birth of Christ, and as the port of entry to the third millennium. This consciousness is accompanied, according to me, with two feelings, which in the last analysis I would define hope and preoccupation. Hope for a world of peace, of refound solidarity, reconstruction of human values. Preoccupation in facing the next century, in the uncertainty of values and ideals. Hope in this great movement of a spiritual nature which directs the consciences of individuals and groups and the preoccupations which the international and Italian news place on us daily. Attention on the event also focuses worries for the health of the Holy Father. Hopes and worries which are also present in the cities involved in the Jubilee, for all the works of a structural character foreseen for the reception of pilgrims. Worries relative to traffic, to viability, to reception, with respect to the finishing of the work in progress, to generalized suspicion regarding the transparency and honesty with which the public works are being completed, but here also the hope to have at the end a city improved and more livable.

The media must, I believe, lend a continuous attention both to the topics directly related to the Jubilee and to all the social and religious thematics which are intertwined and connected with this event. The Jubilee is already present as an event in prospective, in normal news programming. Television and radio news in all the regional redactions, in particular Lazio, follow the big and small events of preparation for the Holy Year precisely to avoid a fragmenting or discontinuity of information. In the Rome redaction, for example, three colleagues have already been delegated to follow all the events connected to the Jubilee precisely to show the growing importance of the initiatives which little by little bring us closer to the turning of the year 2000.