VATICAN - Pope Benedict XVI receives participants at the Plenary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications “I urge you to renew your efforts to assist those working in the world of media to promote what is good and true, especially in regard to the meaning of human and social existence, and to denounce what is false”

Vatican City (Fides Service) - On Friday 17 March in the Sala Clementina in the Vatican when he received the participants at the Plenary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications Pope Benedict XVI said “I urge you to renew your efforts to assist those working in the world of media to promote what is good and true, especially in regard to the meaning of human and social existence, and to denounce what is false, especially pernicious trends which erode the fabric of a civil society worthy of the human person.”
“I wish to thank you for your important apostolate in social communications-the Pope said at the beginning of his address - both as a form of direct evangelisation and a contribution towards the promotion of all that is good and authentic for every human society”. Pope Benedict XVI went on to refer to his own first Message for World Communications Day, which considers "the media as a network which facilitates communication, communion and cooperation”. Forty years after the Inter Mirifica decree issued by Vatican II which recognised the enormous power of the means of communications to inform the minds of individuals and shape their thoughts, “we understand today more than ever the pressing need to use this power for the good of humanity”.
Pope Benedict XVI reminded those present of the challenge to encourage the social communications and entertainment industries to be protagonists of truth and promoters of the peace: “this commitment demands principled courage and resolve, on the part of those who own and work within the hugely influential media industry, to ensure that promotion of the common good is never sacrificed to a self-serving quest for profit or an ideological agenda with little public accountability” he said.
The Pope mentioned another urgency pinpointed in his Message for Communications Day 2006, the need to uphold and support marriage and the family “the foundation of every culture and society. In cooperation with parents, the social communications and entertainment industries can assist in the difficult but sublimely satisfying vocation of bringing up children, through presenting edifying models of human life and love. How disheartening and destructive it is to us all when the opposite occurs!!”. Pope Benedict XVI ended by quoting St Paul - “Christ is our peace: in Him we are one (cfr Eph 2, 14)” - and he exclaimed: “And let us work together to build up the communion of love according to the designs of the Creator made known through his Son!” (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 18/3/2006 - righe 31; parole 439)