Vatican City

Papal media messages can cut through 'post-truth' fog

Helping people see world with realism and trust must be encouraged, says pope

Pope Francis on the cover of a 2014 edition of Rolling Stone magazine. Bishop Paul Tighe, adjunct secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said that people need 'good, reliable, trustworthy information.' (Photo by Michael Thurston/AFP)

By Carol Glatz for Catholic News Service

Published: February 02, 2017 05:11 AM GMT

Updated: February 02, 2017 05:27 AM GMT

With "post-truth" being crowned "Word of the Year" by Oxford Dictionaries, Pope Francis' urgent call to communicate trust and hope could not have come at a better time.

Helping people see the world with "realism and trust" must be encouraged as well as fostering encounter, not exclusion, through constructive dialogue, the pope said in his World Communications Day message this year.

A post-truth culture in which objective facts and objective, divinely inspired moral principles no longer have any place or pull in people's lives is not to be taken lightly, said Bishop Paul Tighe, adjunct secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

"One of the real risks at the moment is that if we become totally skeptical about all the [sources] of information, it will lead to a breakdown of the kind of trust that is necessary for society and indeed our own human lives to flourish," he told Catholic News Service.

People need "good, reliable, trustworthy information" if they are going to make "responsible and dependable decisions in areas of politics, economics, health care" and other key concerns, he said.

Full story: Papal media messages can cut through 'post-truth' fog

Source: Catholic News Service

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