OVERVIEW
In recent times, an increasing number of dioceses, episcopal conferences and other ecclesial realities have set up their own departments of communication. There is a growing awareness of their important role in making known the nature and activity of the Church in diverse cultural and professional environments.
The experience of communications professionals shows that the effectiveness of their work depends on many factors, both internal and external. One of the decisive elements is the organization of the work itself: competent direction should permit one to make maximum use of often-scarse resources.
Pluralistic and complex societies present ever new challenges, such that an office of communication cannot content itself with simply issuing press releases; neither can its task be limited to the repetition of antiquated formulas. The new communication arena demands that the communications office be a fountain of ideas, a laboratory for projects, a centre for relationships and dialogue, and a purveyor of responses. Obviously, these demands call for a management team full of initiative and creativity.
The 5th Professional Seminar for Church Communications Offices invites professionals to reflect on the challenges of running a communications office: the compatibility between long-term strategies and day-to-day work; the criteria for determining priority objectives; the methodology employed in designing communication plans; the management qualities required of those in charge of the offices.
The Seminar also intends to analyze both the contents of institutional communication in the ecclesial environment and the means to transmit them in a clear and positive way.
The School of Church Communications of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross provides, in this Seminar, a forum for an eminently practical professional meeting, directed to those in charge of communicative activities in ecclesiastical institutions all over the world.