Tuesday, February 22, 2011
By Speroforum
The global portal with "wiki" management of the media in the Catholic
Church (http://www.intermirifica.net) has just published a list of the
Catholic media organisations in Cuba. There are about 60 agencies
involved in social communication in this country where the Church has no
radio or television stations of its own. There are 52 publications
(print and online), at least six communications offices and two
production houses, all with little access to the Internet.
According to Father Justo Ariel Beramendi, a Bolivian priest responsible
for Latin America for the Pontifical Council for Social Communications,
the communications landscape of the Catholic Church in Cuba which
emerges from this list reflects the evolution of instruments of
proclaiming the Gospel. So after decades of silence, small publications
have appeared that are becoming popular.
In 1995, the Network of the Church in Latin America created an
inter-diocesan digital network of communications, through the Apostolic
Nuncio and the Episcopal Conference. With the global Internet boom in
the late '90s, despite the limited access on the island, some bulletins
began to be published on the web. But the effort to enter the digital
age had and still has encounters great difficulty due to the restricted
access to the Internet for Cubans who still can not access it from home.
So there are few pastoral workers who can systematically use the
network. But the real challenge is changing attitudes. To take up this
new form of communication has been a gradual but effective process. Fr
Beramendi cites as an example the Pilgrimage of the 'Virgen de la
Caridad del Cobre' throughout the dioceses of Cuba, which was followed
by many people around the world thanks to a group of Cubans who were
able to provide news, photos, testimonies and much more material over
the web.
Source: FIDES
No comments:
Post a Comment