Biographical profile of the PopeThis morning the first audience of Pope Leo XIV took place in the Paul VI Hall in the Vatican, and he wanted to meet - as his predecessor did - with the press that covered the conclave during these days. The pontiff was received with a loud applause and, with a sense of humor that we are discovering, he commented that the merit is not in receiving the applause at the beginning, but in being able to maintain it until the end.
His words were a tribute to the work of journalists and a call for peace. There was also a reference to the Artificial Intelligence. Once again he used the expression "disarmed and disarming", this time applied to communication. These are themes and ways of speaking that are being repeated and that give us clues as to how this pontificate will be articulated.
Rejecting the war paradigm
Starting from the beatitude in which Jesus says: "blessed are the peacemakers", he commented that building peace is a challenge "that concerns you closely, calling each one to the commitment to seek a different kind of communication, which does not seek consensus at all costs, which does not disguise itself in aggressive words, which does not embrace the model of competition, which never separates the search for truth from the love with which we must humbly seek it".
He assured that "the way we communicate is of vital importance: we must say 'no' to the war of words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war".
A loud applause followed when the Pope expressed "the Church's solidarity with the journalists imprisoned for having sought and told the truth" and called for their release: "The suffering of journalists in prison challenges the conscience of nations and the international community, appealing to all of us to safeguard the precious good of freedom of expression and of the press".
Getting out of the 'tower of Babel'.
Leo XIV thanked the communicators for their work - "thank you, dear friends, for your service to the truth" - especially in recent weeks: "You have been here in Rome to speak of the Church, of her variety and, at the same time, of her unity".
He added that "we live in difficult times to go through and to tell", which demand of everyone "not to give in to mediocrity". "The Church," he continued, "must accept the challenge of time and, in the same way, there can be neither communication nor journalism outside of time and history. As St. Augustine reminds us: 'Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the time'".
Once again he thanked them for "getting out of stereotypes and commonplaces", and commented that "today one of the most important challenges is that of promoting a communication capable of getting us out of the 'tower of Babel' in which we so often find ourselves, of the confusion of languages without love, often ideological or factional".
"Communication," he recalled, "is not only the transmission of information, but the creation of culture, of human and digital environments that become spaces for dialogue and coexistence. A few words about the current technological evolution - from which the choice of the name Leo XIV derives - were not lacking: "I am thinking in particular of artificial intelligence with its immense potential, which demands responsibility and discernment in order to direct the instruments to the good of all, so that we can produce benefits for humanity".
Let's disarm the words
The recently inaugurated pontificate has been greeted with novelty by the media, which these days analyze every aspect of the biography of Robert Prevostevery sentence, comment or action. The Pope was open and welcoming this morning with journalists: "Dear friends, we will learn over time to know each other better".
Echoing the last message of Pope Francis on World Communications Day, he repeated: "What is needed is not a thunderous and muscular communication, but a communication capable of listening, of picking up the voice of the weak who have no voice. Let us disarm words and we will help to disarm the Earth. Disarming communication allows us to share a different vision of the world and to act in a way that is consistent with our human dignity".
He concluded: "You are in the front line to narrate conflicts and hopes for peace, situations of injustice and poverty, and the silent work of so many for a better world. That is why I ask you to consciously and courageously choose the path of communicating peace".
The Pope then came forward to greet the hundreds of journalists present, who saw him off - until the end - with applause.
