On the well-known web portal of the Italian “Treccani” Encyclopedia, a special section is devoted to the words used by Pope Francis in important papal documents. For the Pope, communication is primarily sharing, and sharing requires listening.
By Alessandro Gisotti
Can we communicate by listening? We live in a time when it seems that if we don’t have the last word, we have “lost” communication. It’s something we see every day in television talk shows and in debates between politicians. We experience it personally on social networks (the most populous public squares today). Whatever the topic, if we haven’t published the latest tweet or post, it can seem like we’re defeated in the conversation.
Pope Francis has overturned this functionalist paradigm of communication, which sees communication as a weapon to be used against the other. He has restored his primary value: a gift, an opportunity that helps us grow together with another. The direct result of this “altruistic” logic is that the communicator does not triumph over the message he or she wants to convey. On the contrary, the power of the message grows as the person communicating it “moves aside”.
Silence that speaks
With Pope Francis, silence and even immobility (a paradox in the age of the mass media always in search of sound and movement) become amplifiers of significance. Those of us who had the privilege of following Pope Francis’s visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau on July 29, 2016, were touched by his silent prayer, which seemed to take an endless amount of time. That silence, more than any speech, was able to communicate grief and dismay at the pain that place will always have. But at the same time, it also communicated the need to remember, never to forget the unspeakable horror of the death camps.
Four years later there is yet another “silence” in another dramatic moment in contemporary history. It is March 27, 2020: the Pope is alone, St. Peter’s Square is empty and he is praying under the wooden crucifix of the Church of St. Marcello and the icon of the Salvation of the Roman people. In an almost surreal context, that celebration remains one of the strongest images of the pandemic. The next day, the photo of the praying Pope appeared on the front pages of newspapers around the world. His message reached far beyond the boundaries of the Catholic faith and gave voice to the fear and hope of all mankind.
The calls from the pastor
Listening is a fundamental and original part of Pope Francis’ “countercultural communication”. It is no coincidence that during this period, characterized by the impossibility of moving and the drastic reduction in the number of people he meets, – with that ‘creativity of love’ he often refers to – spent a lot of time achieving people through a fairly old means of communication that never goes out of style: the telephone. During the months of lockdown, Pope Francis made numerous appeals to suffering people, to Covid-19 patients, to the elderly, and even to nurses and young people (for example, to that of the Nembro oratory in one of the most Italian areas). affected by the virus), who roll up their sleeves to help people in difficulty. These phone calls from Jorge Mario Bergoglio, on the other hand, serve more to listen to their experiences than to offer advice. “This,” he said in an interview with a Spanish magazine, “helped me feel the pulse of how families and communities lived at the time.”
Listening therapy
On the other hand, Pope Francis had already stressed in 2016 that listening is “much more than hearing” – “listening means paying attention, desiring to understand, value, respect, cherish the word of others.” On his international trip to Mexico that same year, while speaking to the young people of the city of Morelia, he said that when a friend is in trouble, it is necessary to stand by them and listen:
What is needed, he reiterated during the Jubilee of Mercy, is an “apostolate of the ear.” This formula seems to reflect Francis of Assisi’s admonition to his brethren: “Incline the ear of your heart.”
After meeting Mother Teresa, Italian author Pier Paolo Pasolini said, “Where she looks, she sees.” In a sense, in his dimension as a communicator, “where Pope Francis hears, he listens”. For him, listening is part of the ABC’s of human relationships. It takes time, it takes patience – the right amount of time to get closer to the other, shorten distances, and overcome prejudices. It is an attitude that sometimes surprises, but which is perfectly in line with the vision of a “Church that goes out”, of a Church as “field hospital” – a vision that Pope Francis takes on and testifies to. To communicate, Pope Francis has written, “means to share, and to share requires listening.”
The power of closeness
Many wonder where the secret to the Pope’s communicative success lies, one that remains intact almost eight years after his election. This has been demonstrated, for example, by his homilies at morning mass that were streamed online during the pandemic and followed by millions of people around the world. Perhaps the ‘secret’ lies precisely in the fact that he puts the authentic value of communication back at the center, concentrating on the person instead of the means. It is a ‘paradoxical’ force that gains strength the more it serves the other: the force of closeness.
Even in communication, the Pope therefore asks us to follow the model of the Good Samaritan. It is no coincidence that he wrote in his first Message for World Day of Communication that the parable of the Good Samaritan “is also a parable of communication” because “those who communicate in fact become neighbors.” With words and gestures, Pope Francis tells us daily that we must “take the risk” to communicate, take the risk for our neighbor, just like that man from Samaria did on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. For the Pope, we should not be afraid to make room for the opinions or proposals of others, or even questions, while understanding the good that each person carries. Only by recognizing ourselves as brothers and sisters can we actually build a better future worthy of our common humanity.