“Why are you like this?”
Pope Francis’ message for World Communications Day 2025
Now who is going to harm you if you are enthusiastic for what is good?
But even if you should suffer because of righteousness, blessed are you. Do not be afraid or terrified with fear of them,
but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope,
but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who defame your good conduct in Christ may themselves be put to shame.
For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that be the will of God, than for doing evil. (1 Peter 3:13-17)
I will confess that I have not paid much attention to the Jubilee this year. I mean I know there’s a jubilee, the holy doors are open, and Rome had a lot of civic improvements in anticipation of record crowds. And of course I know Luce.
It had not sunk in for me, though, that the theme for this jubilee was hope. It finally did sink in last Friday, when Pope Francis released this year’s World Communications Day message, “Share with gentleness the hope that is in your hearts,” and then linked it explicitly with the ongoing jubilee.1
Francis exhorts his listeners to become “communicators of hope” who do not “peddle illusions or fears” but instead ensure “that those who listen, read or watch can be involved, can draw close, can get in touch with the best part of themselves and enter with these attitudes into the stories told.” From reading over the message, there are three aspects of it that I want to highlight.
First is the underlying view of communication here. One of the seminal texts of Catholic teaching on social communications, Communio et Progressio, states that communication is “at its most profound level…the giving of self in love” (CP 11). More than a concern about the means of social communication, this body of teaching is focused on giving one’s authentic self and being open to receiving the authentic other. Francis sees being “communicators of hope” as part of this tradition. He describes his dream “of a communication capable of making us fellow travelers, walking alongside our brothers and sisters and encouraging them to hope in these troubled times,” and of being “able to give reasons for hope.”
Giving of the self in love is made difficult by these “troubled times,” however. Francis is critical of the world of communications he sees today, one undermined by disinformation, polarization, aggressive communication, resentment, and fanaticism. I suspect anyone active online or regularly consuming the news can see the truth of this description. Communications in this context ends up being more like battle than a gift, and so Francis calls for a communications disarmament that will beat out tweets posts into ploughshares.
Second, Francis’ vision of hopeful communications is built around two scripture passages. The first is from 1 Peter 3, quoted up at the top. The pope highlights verses 15-16 and the emphasis on (1) Christ as the face and source of our hope, (2) the call to give an account for one’s hope, and (3) that we should give that account gently and reverently. It is telling perhaps that Peter writes this amid concerns about the suffering and persecution of Christians, exhorting his readers to continue to do good amid evil and to do so without fear. The world of broken communication Francis describes may not be the same as that of Peter, but it is one that makes authentic giving of the self in love risky.
The other scripture passage is the Emmaus story from Luke 24:13-35. There, Jesus joins Cleopas and another disciple on the road. Despite their dejection, they speak with him about all that has occurred in Jerusalem. Yet as they talk, Jesus gives himself in love to these two dejected disciples as he interprets these events in light of the scriptures, just as he later gives himself in love to them through the breaking of the bread. It is fitting also that when we meet these two, they are suffering with the belief that the death of their teacher was the end of their hope, yet on their return to Jerusalem they can account for their renewed hope to their fellow disciples.
These two scriptures thus form the basis of Francis’ hope for a communications that can give an account for its hope and that can make us fellow travelers. Indeed this speaks to a running thread in Francis’ papacy: the culture of encounter that reaches out wide in hopes of bringing the disparate together. It’s a difficult thread to realize, one that Francis himself sometimes fails at, but it seems also a dream worth continuing to pursue.
Third, this message continues an interesting feature of Francis’ approach to World Communications Day, which is that he’s not particularly interested in specific means of social communication but rather underlying virtues and challenges to communication at all. Previous popes typically focused on specific technologies and their role in contemporary communications.2 Francis does not ignore technology entirely. He refers to the distractions of contemporary technology, noting the challenge to prudence of some technology’s ability to “modify our perception of reality.” He also exhorts attention to the interior life amid “the astonishing achievements of technology.” Yet notice that even in these cases, he isn’t focusing on particular technologies, and the emphasis is generally more suspicious than anything. But that’s the extent of technology in this message, and it’s fairly common of those he writes.3
In the end, the line that stuck with me the most is when Francis writes “Why do you live like this? Why are you like this?” In context, this is his rephrasing of the call to give an account for one’s hope. For myself, I read it first more as rebuke. Why am I like this? Why are we like this? Why are we so drawn to “aggressive communications,” to dunking, to trolling, to all of our worst instincts in contemporary digital communications? I think precious little of my online time has been spent giving an account for the hope that is within me. As I’ve reflected on the message the last few days, “Why are you like this?” has become something of a digital examen for me.
The last few years, I’ve been kicking around the idea of “digital works of mercy,” drawing on and adapting the spiritual works of mercy. But my struggle with it has been that I think most everyone’s favorite digital works of mercy are going to be “instructing the ignorant” and “admonishing the sinner,” and generally not out of an actual sense of mercy. Perhaps I should return to this idea with a bit more hope.
Addendum: one thing this message does help me with is thinking more about hope and digital theology. I have a book chapter coming out in the next few months on artificial intelligence, existential risk, and eschatology. A key part of the conclusion is an exhortation to the virtue of hope in contrast to the despair and presumption that I think are operative in a lot of the “AI as existential risk discourse.” So I’ll probably post more about that when it comes out.
And as Francis often does with his WCD messages, the focus is on how communication is part of the Church’s current missionary response to the world. For example, the 2016 message was tied to the extraordinary jubilee of mercy that year, while the messages for 2021, 2022, and 2023 laid out Francis’ approach to the Synod on Synodality.
My personal favorite is John Paul II’s 1993 message on "Videocassettes and audiocassettes in the formation of culture and of conscience.”
The biggest exception is probably last year’s message on artificial intelligence.