With this significant title, “Città nuova”, the magazine of the Focolare Movement-Italy, part of our network, defined the first Jubilee of Communicators that took place in Rome, within the great ‘Jubilee of Hope’ promoted by Pope Francis for 2025, as reported by Sara Fornaro, editor-in-chief of the magazine. Below is the transcript of the article. In this context, Guglielmo Bosselli, former editor-in-chief of the magazine Cittá nuova-italiana, was remembered for Oreste Paliotti. We share these lines at the end, which can be a model for communicators who wish to work for universal brotherhood.
The webinar workshop entitled “Communicating to build community”, which will take place on Wednesday 12 February from 6pm on the Synodal Communication network YouTube channel, which is promoted by our network, is part of this journey,
Communicators together to build community-29.01.25/Sara Fornaro
“That of a journalist is more than a profession. It is a vocation and a mission. You communicators have a fundamental role in society today, in telling the facts and in the way you tell them. Language, attitude, tone, can be decisive and make the difference between a communication that rekindles hope, creates bridges, opens doors, and a communication that instead increases divisions, polarisations, simplifications of reality”. The speech delivered by Pope Francis to the communicators on the occasion of their jubilee highlights the power that the mass media can have and the opportunities that can derive, for the entire community, from the work of those involved in communication.
Communication that is true, attentive, listening, done with the heart and wearing out the soles of the shoes. A communication that seeks to build peace, that knows how to open to hope and point out paths of dialogue. A communication that starts with facts and tells them with truth. That builds and does not destroy.
That of communicators is an individual profession, which, however, can find its turning point in the word ‘together’, as underlined by Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa, who spoke with the pope and other witnesses in the Paul VI Hall during the highlight of the first jubilee of the Holy Year proclaimed by Francis.For the Jubilee of communicators, a memory of Guglielmo Boselli-23.01.25/Oreste Paliotti
The first Jubilee of the Holy Year, dedicated to workers in the world of communication, will take place from 24 to 26. An occasion to remember Guglielmo Boselli, former editor of the magazine Città Nuova
The jubilee appointment of 24-26 January, dedicated to the world of communication, coincides with the feast of St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of journalists. It is a precious opportunity to reflect on the role of information and encourage all those who work in this field to pursue a message of truth and hope. It is also an opportunity to remember the figure of Guglielmo Boselli, a focolarino who from 1958 was among the ‘pioneers’ of the magazine Città Nuova and later also its editor for several decades.
For simplicity of writing, attention to the person and service to the truth in the perspective of universal fraternity, Guglielmo (familiarly known as Guglia) remains a reference figure for those working in the media field today. But for those who knew the flame that burned in his heart and worked with him for years around the table of the editorial board of Città Nuova, he is also an example of how a Gospel-oriented outlook is able to lift, purify and redeem so many human realities.
Among the many papers that remain of him, in a kind of ‘Daily Vademecum for those preparing to receive new responsibilities at Città Nuova tomorrow’ we find these revealing notes on his inner life:
Patience is a great virtue for building quickly, even though it may appear otherwise. Haste is a dangerous enemy of truly fruitful work – Avoid all forms and expressions of ‘paternalism’, real or apparent. Relationships of true convinced fraternity: never resonate even an attitude of apparent superiority – Willingly accept the ideas of others, even if they do not coincide with one’s own, on the New City approach. Unity of design is built in plurality. Different thoughts are an enrichment, not an obstacle – Accepting criticism of oneself gladly. They are a gift, not an offence.
Focolare founder Chiara Lubich strongly believed in the contribution of the media to a more united world and in several public speeches she illustrated the “more” that the charism of unity can also bring in this area. When, in June 2001, she launched the idea of a periodic training school for media workers, Guglia himself, together with a focolarina, was given the task of carrying out the application of Focolare spirituality in this field. On 21 September of that year I was also present at his first and also last talk – on 6 November he died suddenly – and like all those present I was deeply touched by the crystal clarity of his exposition and the strong spiritual experience that transpired. Here is a short extract:
If we are clear that we are the objects of God’s love, we can also glimpse this love in the great and often tragic mosaic of the defeats of human society, how the human ‘project’ is maturing in it. The great discovery of God’s love in the early days [of the Movement] illuminates the whole of reality: the great story as well as the small story of each individual… We will thus be able to grasp and communicate the seeds of new life sown precisely where the wounds and social deviance are most serious… For those who work in the media, it is a matter of acquiring, so to speak, the ‘nose’ for love, to grasp it wherever there is a trace of it.
This ‘nose’ for love has for the current members of the editorial staff and those who work with them the sense of a delivery.
In this regard, we cannot forget Pope Francis’s warning to journalists in his message for the 55th Day of Social Communications in 2021: “Communication runs the risk of flattening itself to certain dominant logics, of bowing to power or even of constructing fake news. Do not fall into the temptation to align yourself, go against the tide, always wearing the soles of your shoes and meeting people. Only in this way can you be ‘authentic by vocation’. And never forget those who are on the margins, the poor, the lonely, the discarded”.
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To learn more about him, do not miss the PassaParola Guglielmo Boselli, master of communication by Oreste Paliotti
