Indian church ripe for new era of mass media, Vatican official says

Published: 2004-01-07

VATICAN CITY (CNS)-- Blessed Mother Teresa's legacy set a prime example for future communicators in India, said U.S. Archbishop John P. Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. In a Jan. 7 keynote address at the biennial assembly of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India in Trichur, Archbishop Foley said, "The work of Mother Teresa ... indicates how effectively good example can communicate, and how the best communication depends upon the authentic example of communicators." Archbishop Foley's office released a copy of his text. He said the nonthreatening but courageous way Blessed Mother Teresa sought to serve Christ "has been a marvelous form of evangelization." Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta spent years working with the poor and outcast in India's cities and slums. She was beatified Oct. 19 by Pope John Paul II six years after her death. Archbishop Foley said that, just as "almost everyone has heard of Mother Teresa and of her work," the Indian church's communications strategy "should ... continue to include cooperation with projects to make better known the educational and charitable work of the Catholic Church."

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