Journalists must be servants of the Word, combining love and knowledge.
This was the ultimate summary of the homily given by Monsignor Renato Tarantelli Baccari, Vice Manager of the Vicariate of Rome, during the celebration of Holy Mass dedicated to St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists, on the morning of January 26, 2026.
The celebration was promoted by the Council of the Order of Journalists of Lazio, the Office for Social Communications of the Diocese of Rome, and the Ucsi (Italian Catholic Press Union) Lazio. The meeting took place at the Church of St. Joseph of the Carpenters, at Clivo Argentario, a place that stands above the ancient Mamertine Prison.
Present were the President of the Order of Journalists, Guido D’Ubaldo, and the Director of the Office for Social Communications of the Diocese of Rome, Father Giulio Albanese.
The Communications Office of the General Curia of the Sisters of Charity was pleased to participate in this event.
We are happy to report here some ideas taken from the homily, which initially focused on the combination of knowledge and love. In fact, as Monsignor Renato Tarantelli Baccari pointed out, knowledge refers to the search for will, while love has the will to do good as its ultimate goal. To know something, you have to love it, enter into it, in the same way that a journalist does with the news. In the journalism profession, these two dimensions, love and knowledge, must be kept side by side.
Pope Leo XIV, in his message for the 60th World Day of Social Communications, spoke at length on the theme of safeguarding the face and voice, two elements that in the age of AI are often and easily manipulated. Unlike Artificial Intelligence, the journalist’s service is a call to live something extremely similar to the Faith of the Gospel: the Good News. Journalists, as human beings, have the ability to understand pain, to understand reality not as something abstract, to understand the effect of words.
AI is also characterized by complacency, another difference from the service of journalists, who are not called to please either the reader or the person who asks them to write, but always and only serve the Truth, through evidence that must be examined and sources that must be understood in their reality.
Journalists, through the use of words, can then be builders of peace, not conflict. AI does not enter into the purpose and consequences of words. We live in a world that needs to refocus on a truth that is more anthropological than technical. Journalists must therefore be, in this sense, servants of the Word.
At the end of the celebration, the new Deputy Director of the Office of Social Communications of the Diocese of Rome, Father Marco Staffolani, a Passionist, was introduced. This was followed by greetings from Guido D’Ubaldo, president of the Order of Journalists of Lazio, and the regional president of Ucsi, Maurizio Di Schino.
The morning concluded with a visit to the Mamertine Prison for all those present.
