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The holy father replied, “Certainly! If it doesn’t happen on television, it doesn’t happen!”

That remark reflects the openness of Pope John Paul II to the communications media and his own realization of the role of the media in contemporary life. He made sure that all of his public activity would be open to media coverage.

The holy father realized that if he were speaking to groups of hundreds or even thousands, he might as well have his words heard by millions through the communications media.

For Pope John Paul II, the important thing was to communicate the message of Jesus Christ to the widest possible audience. He aptly described the communications media as the new marketplace of ideas, a “new Areopagus,” where the gospel is proclaimed to the masses.

Communication and evangelization

Since his days as a priest, Pope John Paul II – then Father Karol Wojtyla – realized the importance of communications for the church and its work of evangelization. As a priest in Communist-dominated Poland, he was a regular contributor to one of the few Catholic publications allowed to exist at the time.

It is important to remember that, after his episcopal ordination, Bishop Wojtyla participated in the Second Vatican Council, including the second session in 1963 at which was approved the document Inter Mirifica, the Decree on Social Communications. He would have been aware of the protests against Inter Mirifica and of the fact that it received the greatest number of negative votes of any Council document.

Msgr. Andrzej Maria Deskur, now a cardinal, was Bishop Wojtyla’s best friend in Rome and was deeply involved in the preparation of the decree. He indicated to me that Bishop Wojtyla reasoned that Inter Mirifica asked for three things that would eventually overcome any reservations journalists might have about the document: first, the establishment of a department of the Holy See devoted to communications, an action that was taken in March 1964; second, the establishment of World Communications Day and the issuing of annual messages, and this began in 1967; and third, the preparation of a pastoral instruction on communications.

This pastoral instruction, Communio et Progressio, was published in 1971, and Cardinal Deskur indicated that Cardinal Wojytla – he was so named in 1967 – took a special interest in its development.

Continued interest

Two communications activities of the Holy See that attracted the special attention of Cardinal Wojtyla were the Vatican Film Library and the international seasonal television transmissions of the holy father’s ceremonies.

As Roman pontiff, Pope John Paul II continued to have an interest in the Vatican Film Library, visiting the theater located in the offices of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications once or twice a year to see films. For example, he saw the film “Gandhi” to help prepare himself for his pastoral visit to India, and he often viewed films that treated of the Shoah, the terrible tragedy of attempted extermination of the Jewish people by the Nazis in the Second World War.

Two particularly memorable films of this nature were “Au Revoir, Les Enfants” and “La Vita è Bella” (“Life Is Beautiful”), an Oscar-winning film starring Roberto Benigni, who viewed the film with the holy father.

Regarding the international telecasts, while they had been initiated by Pope Paul VI, it was Pope John Paul II who made possible the expansion of these telecasts. He established the Vatican Television Center (CTV) in 1983 to serve as a production facility that would cover all of the public activity of the holy father. By making available videocassettes, DVDs or live signals to networks around the world, the CTV made possible wider and more extensive coverage of papal activities.

Truly moving pictures

A few days after his election to the papacy in 1978, Pope John Paul II, at the initiative of then-Bishop Deskur, invited journalists to a special audience, just as his predecessor Pope John Paul I had done.

Last year, recalling these two precedents, I asked that the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI grant an audience to representatives of the media. About 6,000 of them came to the Paul VI Audience Hall to hear the new holy father thank them for all of their work during the final illness, death, and funeral of Pope John Paul II, and his own election as Pope.

Ironically – or perhaps providentially – the death and funeral of Pope John Paul II became probably the most widely covered of such events in world history. For example, an estimated two billion people from around the world watched the funeral Mass of Pope John Paul II on a total of 155 networks, six of them international and 149 of them regional or national. This interest continued for the Mass for the ...