AMERICA/BRAZIL - 5th General Conference of the Bishops' Conferences of Latin America and the Caribbean seen by the media

Saturday, 26 May 2007

Aparecida (Agenzia Fides) - "Your difficult task as communicators is show the world the faces, situations and achievements of the local Churches You will let people at home know what is going on here at Aparecida". This was part of a message to journalists accredited to follow the 5th General Conference of the Bishops' Conferences of Latin America and the Caribbean issued on the occasion the Catholic Church's World Day of Communications 20 May by CELAM, the Council of Latin American Bishops' Conferences in Latin America. The message told the media operators that their important task was to make the message of the Conference “known to the world”.
According to CELAM Communications officer Fr. David Gutiérrez, on the occasion of previous Conferences in Puebla and in Santo Domingo, some 1,500 journalists covered both events while John Paul II was present and then the number dropped to about 300 for the rest of the Conference period. For this 5th Conference in Aparecida no less than 3,700 journalists were accredited during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, 9-13 May, and 500 have remained for the duration of the Conference.
Darío Ortiza, communications officer of the Mexican Bishops' Conference told Fides about the cordial the atmosphere of collaboration among the media operators in Aparecida. He said the information received is very useful but not always sufficient. In this regard María Elena Rojas, communications officer of the Peruvian Bishops' Conference, told Fides said this Conference is open to the media: "it let's itself be seen " and this is good for everyone.
With regard to the issues most interesting for the media María Elena Rojas includes the great Continental Mission which is something new. People want to know if the Mission will be concrete with a plan and guidelines or whether it will be simply a desire to put the continent in a state of mission in order to reach the goals identified in the final Document. She said that non confessional media operators are more interested in cultural, social, economic issues as well as the results of the self assessment which the Church has undertaken.
However Darío Ortiza the Mexican Bishops' communications officer said non confessional media are also interested in how the Church intends to contribute to solving social problems shared by most Latin America countries, migration, social inequality, underdeveloped indigenous communities, marginalised and most vulnerable sectors. But he also warned that many are of the opinion that the Conference can solve all the social problems on the Continent, this is not and never has been the main objective of the General Conferences of the Bishops' Conferences of Latin America and the Caribbean which focus on matters regarding the faith and the life of Church on the Continent which is home to 46 percent of the world's Catholics . (RG) (Agenzia Fides 26/5/2007; righe 35, parole 475)


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