austraLasia 1107
SIGNIS tribute: 'Pope of the Media'
PRAGUE: 14th April, 2005 -- World president of the international Catholic media association SIGNIS, Fr Peter Malone msc, has paid tribute to "the Pope of the media" at a meeting of the governing body of SIGNIS in Prague this week.
"He himself was an acknowledged master of media communication" said Malone. "Symbolically, on Good Friday, the world watched him on television watching ceremonies on his television set. It was as if the world were being invited to look (literally) over the media Pope's shoulder as he prayed by means of the media".
The media chief's tribute recalls the Pope's background as actor and playwright, before stepping onto the world stage in 1978 when "the news was mainly communicated by radio, television and the press". Then there was the '80s video revolution, the internet in the '90s and greater access to information through digitisation. "His long pontificate, as could be gauged by the programs screened at his death, provided more than ample material for news features, documentaries and collages of visits to colourful places and meetings with a wide range of public figures".
The SIGNIS tribute highlights the attention John Paul II gave to World Communication Day. "These days provided an occasion for him to highlight a media theme or a justice theme in the context of the media for universal attention and prayer. In 1992 he authorised the publication of Aetatis Novae, The Dawn of a New Age, where the Pontifical Council for Social Communications gathered together reflections on the significance of the media in the latter part of the 20th Century. It also had an important directive, that all dioceses and religious institutions should have a pastoral media plan as part of their overall ministry".
"Other documents from the Council include Ethics in Advertising, Ethics in the Media and Ethics and the Internet. At his annual address to this Council, he ranged over many media topics, in English, speaking of videotapes, of internet and contemporary communications. In 2001 he pressed 'send' on his computer so that the report of the Synod for Oceania could be distributed at once to all countries of the Pacific".
The Pope had been a keen movie-watcher throughout his life, Malone points out at one stage of his tribute. As Pope, "in his addresses to cinema groups, especially in 1999, he spoke of the range of genres of movies, from animation to science fiction, and declared that cinema provided one of the best forums for dialogue, especially for peace".
Fr Malone concluded by saying that "his whole approach to media and his willingness to collaborate with the media (and his own abilities in facing and using the media) is seen in his Gospel perspective. For John Paul II, and he repeated this, media must be regarded positively as 'gifts of God'. He believed in the power of evangelisation of these gifts of God, not in any forced or proselytising manner but, rather, in the manner of St Paul in his encounter with the Athenians".
"The Pope was keen to remind people that, just as Paul dialogues with the Athenians in terms of their own culture, the dialogue was now in the 'new Areopagus' of the media".
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