Mass Media Committee

CONCRETE STEPS TOWARDS THE COMMUNICATION PROJECT

Massimo Aquili

The Mass Media Committee got together last May, one year after the first meeting. It was there that the results of the work and on-going projects for the coming months and years were presented, beginning with the fortnightly Agency-bulletin in four languages that will be issued along with the magazine Tertium Millennium. "Concrete steps forward, many concrete steps have been taken this past year," said Monsignor Pierfranco Pastore in the introductory message. The work of these coming months helped in particular to better define the operations of the Mass Media Committee. «The Committee - explains Monsignor Pastore - is not meant to propose or elaborate the contents, but rather to suggest or animate or organize, according to the needs, the communication and the transmission through the mass media, the contents expressed by the Commissions». In synthesis, these are the objects of the Committee: to put at the service of the Commissions, to explore a closer coordination between the mass media of the Vatican and to collaborate with the press office of the General Secretariat, to maintain a relationship with the media for the diffusion of the contents expressed by the commissions and solicit these means of communication in the various national committees, to collaborate to the edition of the media of the Central Committee, in particular, to the magazine Tertium Millennium and to the Agency-bulletin.

The work was undertaken to reach this end. In dealing with the activity of the magazine Tertium Millennium, we have in fact highlighted and concentrated the activity and commitment of the Mass Media Committee. He relationships with the organs of information of the Vatican have been intensified: a systematic collaboration is expected with the Osservatore Romano. The Vatican Television Center and Vatican Radio will participate to the edition of the magazine with video and audio cassettes which will become a multimedia publication.

An important contribution towards the realization of a real system of communication involving the essential themes of the Jubilee was made thanks to the birth of the Agency-bulletin which already began its publications in June. «The Agency - stresses Monsignor Pastore - creates in the most direct way and I would even say unequivocal way, that function of service, which was specifically asked for by the instruments of communication tied to the Mass Media Committee. The service is orientated in two fundamental dimensions in which the same Committee is structured as the following: formative dimension and the informative dimension». If the magazine responds to the first objective of the formation, the Agency-bulletin moves towards the information sphere and represents «the first step towards that Agency of the Jubilee which will also be diffused through telematic wires» Monsignor Pastore affirmed.

Published in four languages, Italian, English, French and Spanish, the Agency-bulletin carries in it large parts of the contents of the magazine, articles, testimonials, dossiers, studys and opinions. There is also a vast and updated section on the activity in preparation of Churches for the year 2000, in the five continents. There are two essential objectives which are hoped to be achieved. On one side, we want to give the possibility to each national committee to make itself available - for their own publications and for the organisms of communication more interested in their own country - for a series of contributions which are particularly significant. And those contributions would be elaborated by exponents of the various Commissions, scholars, and of real witnesses known in our time and all oriented on the sole prospect of the preparation and the celebration of the Great Jubilee of the year 2000. On the other side, the Agency intends to offer to everyone, through a periodic publication which is more immediate than the bimonthly magazine, a panorama of the activity of the Jubilee in the world, by putting information on the different countries of the five continents.

That is what accounts for the choice of a publication in the four main languages and of a means of a simple and immediate communication like a bulletin on paper, which can be easily photocopied in the number of copies desired by each national Committee and distributed, with more integral information on the local activities of the preparation of the Jubilee.

This is how we wish to reach the needs of those who do not yet use other services and means of information. In particular, the Italian edition will always dedicate more space to the activity of the Italian dioceses for the immediate preparation of the Great Jubilee.