Courtyard of the Gentiles not communicating with the world

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

The Courtyard of the Gentiles, held recently in Paris, has exposed a gaping deficit on the level of communication.

No press office.
No text made available to the media, neither before, nor during, nor after.
Only those present and those listening to Radio Notre-Dame or viewing KTO TV to were able to hear the words of the speakers in real time.
Even the video message of Benedict XVI on the evening of March 25 was poorly publicised; his text had been available for several days, but the Vatican press office distributed it, in five languages, only the next morning.
At the time of writing, if one enters the Vatican website and goes to the pontifical council for culture that promoted and organized the event, one finds nothing whatsoever.

At the time of writing, not even on www.parvisdesgentils.fr – the site created for the occasion – does one find a single line of what was said. There are only a skimpy program and a few notes about the speakers.

For a Courtyard created to promote the dialogue on God among all people of good will, beyond all the borders, this communicative stinginess is a clear contradiction.

The pontifical council for culture and its president, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, worked effectively in the preparatory phase of the event, to publicize it, but they vanished in the transition from announcement to realisation.

And yet, from the very first remarks, the things said in Paris were by no means commonplace.

Read more about what was said at the Courtyard of the Gentiles.

Sources