April 17, 2012. (Romereports.com) The Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome held its eighth international conference on institutional communication of the Church. There to participate were some 300 journalists from around the world.
José María La Porte
Dean of Social and Institutional Communication at Holy Cross University (Rome)
“The context of the entire conference is how to make faith more attractive. It's to make the beauty of faith to be seen as beauty. That the good is recognized as good and in this we have the great work of communication professionals. They're helping to get these stories out there, that are very interesting, bringing them for people to see on their own screens.”
They spoke about topics like the need for journalists to specialize when working with religious information and the importance that the Church doesn't see the media as an enemy but as an aid.
Patricia Thomas
Journalist, Associated Press (USA)
“This conference is of great importance for the Church, because there are many people inside of it who don't know how to work with journalists. They have to know that we are not enemies, we don't want to hurt them when we call, or when we go to the microphone.”
In addition to journalists, there were also producers of religious content for television and the internet. They get their message out through tools like Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter.
Santiago González-Barros
Arguments (Spain)
“Most importantly, know your niche, what you want to communicate, where you want to specialize. And then give a lot of thought to the shape and look for a great design, like how to make videos, how to tweet, and in a way, also to copy and learn from others.”
Mary Shovlain
Lucem Communications (USA)
“One of the hardest things we have to do is figure out what stories to tell, how to tell them and to appeal to the widest audience possible. So a conference like this, is not only going to help fellow journalists, but people who work in communication on a world wide level.”
Each year the Congress aims to bring new ideas and ways to better communicate information about faith and the Church.
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