best for their children, but that love is never dependent on their meeting
certain conditions. The family home is one place where we are always welcome. I
would like to encourage everyone to see society not as a forum where strangers
compete and try to come out on top, but above all as a home or a family, where
the door is always open and where everyone feels welcome.
 For this to happen, we must first listen. Communicating means sharing, and
sharing demands listening and acceptance. Listening is much more than simply
hearing. Hearing is about receiving information, while listening is about
communication, and calls for closeness. Listening allows us to get things
right,
and not simply to be passive onlookers, users or consumers. Listening also
means
being able to share questions and doubts, to journey side by side, to banish
all
claims to absolute power and to put our abilities and gifts at the service of
the common good.
 Listening is never easy. Many times it is easier to play deaf. Listening means
paying attention, wanting to understand, to value, to respect and to ponder
what
the other person says. It involves a sort of martyrdom or self-sacrifice, as we
try to imitate Moses before the burning bush: we have to remove our sandals
when
standing on the 'holy ground' of our encounter with the one who speaks to me.
Knowing how to listen is an immense grace, it is a gift which we need to ask
for
and then make every effort to practice.
 Emails, text messages, social networks and chats can also be fully human forms
of communication. It is not technology which determines whether or not
communication is authentic, but rather the human heart and our capacity to use
wisely the means at our disposal. Social networks can facilitate relationships
and promote the good of society, but they can also lead to further polarisation
and division between individuals and groups. The digital world is a public
square, a meeting-place where we can either encourage or demean one another,
engage in a meaningful discussion or unfair attacks. I pray that this Jubilee
Year, lived in mercy, 'may open us to even more fervent dialogue so that we
might know and understand one another better; and that it may eliminate every
form of closed-mindedness and disrespect, and drive out every form of violence
and discrimination'. The internet can help us to be better citizens. Access to
digital networks entails a responsibility for our neighbour whom we do not see
but who is nonetheless real and has a dignity which must be respected. The
internet can be used wisely to build a society which is healthy and open to
sharing.
 Communication, wherever and however it takes place, has opened up broader
horizons for many people. This is a gift of God which involves a great
responsibility. I like to refer to this power of communication as 'closeness.
The encounter between communication and mercy will be fruitful to the degree
that it generates a closeness which cares, comforts, heals, accompanies and
celebrates. In a broken, fragmented and polarised world, to communicate with
mercy means to help create a healthy, free and fraternal closeness between the
children of God and all our brothers and sisters in the one human family".

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 Presentation of the Pope's Message for the World Day of Social Communications
 Vatican City, 22 January 2016 (VIS) - This morning the a press conference was
held to present the Holy Father's Message for the fiftieth World Day of Social
Communications. The panel was composed of Msgr. Dario Vigano, prefect of the
Secretariat for Communication, Paolo Ruffini, director of TV2000, and Marinella
Perroni of the Pontifical Athenaeum of St. Anselm, Rome.
 The prefect mentioned that this World Day of Social Communications, which the
Church celebrates on May 8, is the fiftieth in chronological order: an
important
fact that relates to Vatican Council II, which fifty years ago issued the
Decree
on the tools of social communication, "Inter mirifica". It is also the only
World Day established by the Council, and on this occasion it is also situated
in the context of the great Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, to which the theme
of the Day refers directly. Finally, it will be the first World Day of Social
Communications held following the creation by the Holy Father of the
Secretariat
for Communications.
 Following this preamble, Msgr. Vigano emphasised that mercy is the distinctive
feature of the Church's way of acting and of being. The relationship between
the
Church and mercy is not an extrinsic one, or indeed accidental ... but rather
intrinsic, constitutive, part of the very identity of the Church. The
experience
of the Pentecost is the beginning of the historic experience of the Church. The
Church carries the memory of Jesus and therefore cannot interpret the words of
His announcement other than in relation to mercy. They are works awaiting by
those who think they are far from the God of mercy of Whom we often have a
distorted image, such as that of God as a ruthless judge unable to engage with
the limits of suffering. ... For the men and women of today, for Jesus' Church,
these are the words to offer as an antidote to the harsh words of precepts
pronounced by those who make accusations of prevailing relativism and the
irrevocability of values. .. The Church called to participate in the messianic
mission must know how to live in a true and authentic humanity. She must learn
from Jesus how to express mercy in words of hope and life and in engaging
gestures, letting us be touched by human experience and knowing, as Pope
Francis
often reminds us, how to touch the flesh of the least among us".
 The second point was the relationship between silence and listening. Msgr.
Vigano cited the Swiss philosopher Max Picard, who explained that contemporary
man has become an appendix to noise, atrophying in a context of words shouted
instead of spoken, that reduce to a minimum our capacity to listen and cause a
lack of attention. "Listening is a necessary act for the development of
communication and it requires above all silence, an indispensable condition for
receiving each word pronounced and for understanding its meaning. ... We
communicate only to the extent that we are are the same time listeners, and
Pope
Francis' attention to this dichotomy is constant". Pope Benedict XVI too paid
great attention to this issue, when in the Message for the 2012 World Day of
Social Communications he wrote that when messages and information are abundant,
silence becomes essential to enable us to distinguish what is important from
what is insignificant and secondary".
 The prefect concluded by quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote that the
merciful "have an irresistible love for the down-trodden, the sick, the
wretched, the wronged, the outcast and all who are tortured with anxiety. They
go out and seek all who are enmeshed in the toils of sin and guilt. No distress
is too great, no sin too appalling for their pity". "It is the blessing of
mercy
that the Church is called to live, first and foremost in her relationships as
the Christian community is not an elite group, nor is it made up of the
perfect.
St. Paul ... invites us all to recognise the starting point of Christian and
ecclesial life, which is God's love and, by His grace, participation in His
holiness".
 Finally, Msgr. Vigano returned to the theme of silence: "From this Gehenna of
noise that is our daily life, from this wind tunnel of gossip, and chatter
there
arises spontaneously a nostalgia for silence, the wish to mute words of
manipulation, to discover the words of silence. Contemporary man, almost
without
realising it, is calling out with Verlaine, give me silence, and the love of
mystery.
 The director of TV2000, Paolo Ruffini, spoke about the need for television
able
to look upon the world with the eyes of mercy, without being afraid of being
rooted in reality. "It must not be closed up in its own studies. ... It chooses
closeness as a criterion for understanding, for surprising itself and for
surprising, for acting, for choosing. ... It draws near to people in flesh and
blood in the real world, not in the virtual one ... and is able to communicate
reality without surrendering to stereotypes, or to the vicious circles of
condemnation and vengeance which, as the Pope writes, continue to ensnare us".

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 Decrees for the Causes of Saints
 Vatican City, 22 January 2016 (VIS) - Yesterday, 21 January, the Holy Father
Francis received in a private audience Cardinal Angelo Amato, S.D.B., prefect
of
the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, during which he authorised the
Congregation to promulgate the following decrees:
 MIRACLES
 - Blessed Stanislaw of Jesus and Mary (né Jan Papczy?ski), Polish founder of
the Congregation of Marians of the Immaculate Conception. (1631-1701);
 - Blessed Jose Gabriel del Rosario Brochero, Argentine diocesan priest
(1840-1914);
 - Blessed Jose Sánchez del Río, Mexican child martyr (1913-1928);
 - Venerable Servant of God Francesco Maria Greco, Italian diocesan priest,
founder of the Congregation of the Little Workers of the Sacred Heart
(1857-1931);
 - Venerable Servant of God Elisabetta Sanna, Italian layperson and widow, of
the Third Order of St. Francis, member of the Catholic Apostolic Union founded
by St. Vincent Pallotti (1788-1857);
 MARTYRDOM
 - Venerable Servant of God Engelmar Unzeitig (né Hubert), German professed
priest of the Congregation of Missionaries of Mariannhill, killed in hatred of
the faith in 1945);
 - Servants of God Genaro Fueyo Castañón, Spanish diocesan priest, and three
companions, laypersons killed in hatred of the faith in 1936;
 - Servant of God Iustus Takayama Ukon, Japanese layperson, killed in hatred of
the faith in 1615.
 HEROIC VIRTUES
 - Servant of God Arsenio da Trigolo (né Giuseppe Migliavacca), professed
priest
of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, Italian founder of the Congregation of
the Sisters of Mary Most Holy Consolatrix (1849-1909);
 - Servant of God Maria Luisa of the Most Holy Sacrament (née Maria Velotti),
Italian member of the Third Order of St. Francis and founder of the Franciscan
Sisters Adorers of the Holy Cross (1826-1886).

___________________________________________________________

 Audiences
 Vatican City, 22 January 2016 (VIS) - Today, the Holy Father received in
audience:
 - Charles Angelo Savarin, president of the Commonwealth of Dominica, with his
wife and entourage;
 - Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith;
 - Timothy Donald Cook, chief executive officer of Apple;
 - Msgr. Pio Vito Pinto, dean of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota;
 - College of Prelate Auditors of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota.

___________________________________________________________

 Note
 Vatican City, 22 January 2016 (VIS) - The date of the Holy Father's letter to
Cardinal Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the
Discipline of the Sacraments, regarding the selection of people for the rite of
the Washing of feet in the Holy Thursday liturgy is 20 December 2014, not 2015,
as erroneously implied in yesterday's Vatican Information Service bulletin. We
apologise to our readers.

___________________________________________________________

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