Film and Digital Media @ Messiah

Pope Benedict, in a May 23 address to participants in a meeting sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. explained that “if communication is to be effective it must be based on truth.”

“A communicator can attempt to inform, to educate, to entertain, to convince, to comfort; but the final worth of any communication lies in its truthfulness,” he said.

The “passion for truth” that communications students and professionals must have and develop “can be well served by a certain methodological skepticism, particularly in matters affecting the public interest,” Pope Benedict said.

However, the pope said, students need guidance to ensure their questioning is not so distorted that it becomes “a relativistic cynicism in which all claims to truth and beauty are routinely rejected or ignored. ”

As media become more and more important in people’s daily lives, he said, helping people learn how to judge the ethical content they are accessing and teaching future professionals the necessity of always upholding the truth take on even greater urgency.

“It also is necessary to promote justice, solidarity and respect in every circumstance for the value and dignity of each person, who has a right not to be harmed in that which concerns his private life,” the pope said.