OCEANIA - The role of Catholic media in the Pacific area

Melbourne (Fides Service) - Catholic media can play an important role to help alleviate social economic and political crisis in various part of the Pacific. This emerged from a Seminar in Melbourne for Church representatives, media workers and experts, members of the Federation of Catholic Media Operators SIGNIS, coming from Australia, Micronesia, French Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, New Caledonia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands.
“We acknowledge, with deep sadness, that the spiralling social, economic and political crisis that plague many of our nations, bring hardship to our citizens and create significant ethical dilemmas to those in the media who bare the heavy responsibility of assisting our governments and our citizenry to explore and implement policies that insure basic human rights” the participants said in a final statement. Recalling Church teaching on the media the participants stressed the need to explore and indicated Gospel paths for society and politics.
“We exhort Pacific media to continue their vital role and indeed to adopt a robust mandate to alleviate the spiralling incidence of alcohol and drug use, increasing unemployment, growing occurrence of HIV/AIDS, political instability and trans-national crime…we stand in solidarity alongside our sisters and brothers in the Pacific media offering our support and prayers. We pledge ourselves to work tirelessly for a Pacific media that fearlessly seeks truth at every turn”.
The Church lives her mission also in the media and Catholics are called to render present the message of Christ. In the Pacific the Church intends to increase her presence in the media and to harness these new forums which are part of the culture and world of the third millennium for her mission to evangelise. (PA) (Agenzia Fide 17/2/2007 righe 26 parole 263)