Pope asks Vatican media to reduce spending as they share the Gospel

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis told members and staff of the Dicastery for Communication that the Vatican and the Catholic Church need their expertise to share the Gospel, but he also asked them to find creative ways to do it while cutting their expenses.

"I dream of a communication that is heart to heart, letting ourselves be touched by what is human, letting ourselves be wounded by the dramas that so many of our brothers and sisters live," the pope said Oct. 31 at the end of the dicastery's plenary meeting.

In addition to listing a variety of "dreams" for how the Vatican's vast communications apparatus would inform people, shine a spotlight on truth and share stories of faith, Pope Francis added to his prepared remarks.

"We must still have a little more discipline regarding money," he said. "You must find a way to save more and find other funds, because the Holy See cannot continue to help you as it does now. I know it is bad news, but it is also good news because it inspires creativity in all of you."

The Vatican Secretariat for the Economy has not published Vatican budget figures since 2022. At that time, it said the dicastery and its various media outlets -- the multilingual Vatican News website, Vatican Radio in Italian, L'Osservatore Romano newspapers in various languages, the Vatican press office, the Vatican's book publishing arm and the Vatican video production center -- cost about 40 million (about $43.4 million) in 2021. The expenditures accounted for 25% of the Vatican budget.

Catholic News Service asked the Vatican press office Oct. 31 for the number of employees at the dicastery and the most recent budget figures, but the press office said the data was not immediately available.

While urging them to cut expenses and find new revenue sources, the pope thanked Vatican News for increasing to over 50 the number of languages in which it offers content on its website; the latest additions were Lingala, Mongolian and Kannada.

"I dream of a communication that succeeds in connecting people and cultures," the pope said. "I dream of a communication capable of telling and raising the profile of stories and testimonies from every corner of the world, circulating them and offering them to everyone," which he said the multilingual website makes possible.

Communicators, especially Catholic communicators, should not try to spread their own ideas, the pope said, "but to recount reality with honesty and passion," going "beyond slogans" and helping people to see, hear and respond to the needs of the poor, migrants and victims of war.

The church and the world need communications that foster "inclusion, dialogue (and) the quest for peace," he said. "How urgent it is to give space to peacemakers! Do not tire of recounting their testimonies in every part of the world."

"Although the world is shaken by terrible violence, we Christians know how to look at the many little flames of hope, the many stories, great and small, of goodness," he told them. "We are sure that evil will not prevail, because it is God who guides history and saves our lives."

More personally, he asked the dicastery and Vatican media to help him "make the heart of Jesus known to the world, through compassion for this wounded land. Help me, with communication, to ensure that the world 'which presses forward despite wars, socio-economic disparities and uses of technology that threaten our humanity, may regain the most important and necessary thing of all: its heart,'" he said, quoting his recent encyclical on devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

"Help me with a communication that is a tool for communion," Pope Francis asked.