This morning, in the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father Leo XIV received in audience the members of the TG2 Editorial Team of the RAI (Radiotelevisione italiana, the Italian national public broadcasting company), on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of its founding.
The following is the address delivered by the Pope to those present during the meeting:
Address of the Holy Father
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Peace be with you!
Good morning to you all, and welcome!
I extend my greetings to the Board of Directors, the Director and the editorial team of TG2, and offer my congratulations on this news programme reaching its fiftieth anniversary.
This “birthday” invites us to reflect on the journey you have made, as a paradigm of the challenges that television journalism has faced and those that still lie ahead. I am thinking of the transition from analogue to digital, in which you played a leading role in seizing the opportunities and understanding that no technological innovation can replace creativity, critical discernment and freedom of thought. And if the challenge of our time is that of artificial intelligence, I think of the need to regulate communication according to the human paradigm and not the technological one. Which means, ultimately, knowing how to distinguish between the means and the ends.
The distinctive features that have characterized you from the very beginning are laicity and pluralism of information sources, even in state television. Laicity understood as a rejection of ideological preconceptions and as an open-minded view of reality. We all know how difficult it is to allow ourselves to be surprised by facts, by encounters, by the gazes and voices of others; how strong the temptation is to seek out, see and listen only to what confirms our own opinions. But there can be no good communication, nor true freedom and healthy pluralism, without this openness.
Throughout the history of TG2, diverse cultural perspectives have coexisted. This diversity, especially when animated by a spirit of friendship, has been an added value to your identity, a source of richness, an example of dialogue, which still has much to teach us today, in an age dominated by polarization, ideological closed-mindedness and slogans that prevent us from seeing and understanding the complexity of reality.
Always, but especially in the dramatic circumstances of war, such as those we are currently experiencing, the media must guard against the risk of becoming propaganda. And the task of journalists, in verifying the news so as not to become a mouthpiece for those in power, becomes even more urgent and delicate—I would say essential.
It is up to you to show the sufferings that war always brings to the people; to show the face of war and to relate it through the eyes of the victims, so as not to transform it into a videogame. It is not easy in the few minutes of a news programme and its in-depth segments. But this is the challenge.
I thank you for your visit, I offer you my best wishes and I bless all of you and your work.
