Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, the president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, recently referred to Our Lady of Guadalupe as a model for Catholic communicators. “With her presence, she is already a messenger and bearer of the Word made flesh who gave himself up to humanity in order to redeem it.”“She herself is a teacher and guide in the service of communicating the mystery of God’s love. For this reason, Blessed John Paul II called her ‘the Star of the new evangelization,’” Archbishop Celli said in a message released on Dec. 9 to commemorate the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Archbishop Celli said that while many Catholic media professionals have “limited human or material resources” to carry out their work, it is evident that “the real effectiveness of communication depends not so much on the abundance of resources or technology, but on the authenticity with which one lives what one proclaims, on the professional quality and will to strengthen fraternal bonds in this great family called the Catholic Church, which is called to be leaven for good and justice in today’s world.”
Archbishop Celli then pointed to a number of events convened by Pope Benedict XVI to be “renewed proclamations of the Gospel.” These include the Synod on the New Evangelization scheduled for Oct. 7-28, 2012, and the Year of Faith, which will begin on Oct. 12 of the same year.
Archbishop Celli invited Catholics “to be facilitators … of comprehensive information appropriate for each sector of society to bring the message to all audiences near and far in an understandable way. That is the task of good communicators wherever they find themselves,” he said.
