Catholic Media Goes 'Mainstream' in Africa

"The religious must permeate the secular realm and must use the format of the mainstream to package religious messages," Sister Dipio affirmed.

ROME (Zenit) - A challenge for faculties of communication at Catholic universities in Africa is to form media producers, not just consumers, said a professor from Uganda.

Sister Dominic Dipio teaches literature and film criticism at Makerere University of Kampala. She has a doctorate from Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University; her thesis was on cinema and the woman in the African context.

Sister Dipio was in Rome for the Pontifical Council for Social Communications conference held last Thursday through Saturday at the Pontifical Urbanian University.

"In the multicultural global context in which we live, we should strive to produce communicators who are producers, rather than simply critical analysts of content and consumers," she told ZENIT.

In this context, Sister Dipio noted that it is easy to find North American and Latin American fiction in Africa, but that there is a lack of similar African products.

That's why "students of communication in Catholic universities are trained to work in the mainstream, not necessarily in secluded religious institutions," she said. "Catholic communications need not only target clearly religious media. It should not only communicate to the converted, but also to the others, so that the horizon of the Good News is expanded."

"The religious must permeate the secular realm and must use the format of the mainstream to package religious messages," Sister Dipio affirmed. "Our values must enter in this public forum to influence the mainstream culture."

The religious sister also encouraged a "curriculum that exposes students to diversities in a comprehensive way," saying this opens up "opportunities for communication across cultures."

"In contexts where ethnic and national identities seem to threaten commonly shared values," she said, "we have the challenge to develop a curriculum that calls forth the best of our human values, which cut across ethnicities and nationalities."