"
I also thank you for what you tell about what is wrong with the Church, for how much you help us not to hide it under the carpet and for the voice you have given to the victims of abuse
. Thank you for this".
The Pope said this to journalists accredited in the Vatican on the occasion of the delivery of the honor to the 'deans' of the Vaticanists Valentina Alazraki and Phil Pullella.
"Thank you for your search for the truth because only the truth makes us free" added Francis, underlining that "
the Church is not a political organization that has right and left as it happens in Parliaments", "it is not a large company. multinational headed by managers who study at a desk how to better sell their product
. The Church does not build itself on the basis of its own project, it does not draw from itself the strength to move forward and does not live on marketing strategies. Every time it falls into this worldly temptation, and many times it falls or has fallen, the Church, without realizing it, believes it has a light of its own ".
"Journalism is reached not so much by choosing a profession, as by embarking on a mission, a bit like the doctor, who studies and works so that evil is cured in the world. Your mission - he said - is to explain the world, to make it less obscure, so that those who live there are less afraid of it and look at others with greater awareness, and also with more confidence. It is not an easy mission. It is complicated to think, meditate, deepen, stop to collect ideas and to study the contexts and precedents of news ". "With the honor given to Valentina and Phil, today I want in some way - Pope Francis underlined - to pay homage to your entire working community; to tell you that the Pope loves you, follows you, esteems you, considers you precious ".
There are "three verbs that I think can characterize good journalism: listen, deepen, tell. Listening is a verb that concerns you as journalists, but that affects us all as a Church, in all times and especially now that the synodal process has begun . Listening, for a journalist, means having the patience - Pope Francis emphasized - to meet face to face with the people to be interviewed, the protagonists of the stories that are told, the sources from which to receive news. Listening always goes hand in hand with seeing, with being there: certain nuances, sensations, all-round descriptions can be transmitted to readers, listeners and viewers only if the journalist has listened and seen for himself. This means escaping, and I know how difficult it is in your work. !,
escape the tyranny of always being online, on social media, on the web "
.
A journalist must first of all "tell" and this "means not putting oneself in the foreground, much less standing up as judges, but it means
letting
oneself
be hit and sometimes hurt by the stories we encounter, in order to be able to humbly narrate them
to our readers.