Spanish
Vatican City.- Pope Leo XIV asked the media this Monday to choose "with conscience and courage the path of a communication of peace" and added: "Let us disarm words and we will help disarm the Earth," in the audience he granted to the journalists who have reported on the conclave in which he was elected.
In the first audience he holds, as Francis also did at the beginning of his pontificate, the first American pope gathered several thousand communicators in the Paul VI hall of the Vatican, to whom he pointed out that "we live in difficult times to navigate and to tell, which pose a challenge for all of us and from which we must not escape."
Read more: Why did the new pope choose the name Leo XIV?
And, he emphasized, that "on the contrary, they ask each of us, in our different roles and services, to never give in to mediocrity."
Leo XIV stated that "what is needed is not a noisy and muscular communication, but a communication capable of listening, of gathering the voice of the weak who have no voice."
"Let's disarm words and we will help disarm the Earth. Disarmed and disarming communication allows us to share a different vision of the world and act in a way consistent with our human dignity," said the Pope, who in his first speech after being elected on May 8th also called for "a disarmed and disarming peace."
And he added: "You are on the front lines narrating conflicts and hopes for peace, situations of injustice and poverty, and the silent work of many for a better world. For this I ask you to choose with conscience and courage the path of a communication of peace."
"There can be no communication or journalism outside of time and history," he said and recalled the phrase of Saint Augustine, since he is Augustinian: "Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times."
To the journalists, who applauded at several points during the speech, he explained that today, "one of the most important challenges is to promote a communication capable of helping us escape from the 'Tower of Babel' in which we sometimes find ourselves, from the confusion of languages without love, often ideological or biased"
And therefore, he emphasized that "the words they use and the style they adopt are important." "Communication, in fact, is not just the transmission of information, but the creation of a culture, of human and digital environments that become spaces for dialogue and confrontation," he added.
And above all, he emphasized before the technological evolution and artificial intelligence "that with its immense potential, which demands, however, responsibility and discernment to guide the tools for the good of all, so that they can produce benefits for humanity".
Leo XIV was greeted upon entering the Paul VI hall with a loud applause by the journalists and joked that he hoped the applause would also come at the end of his speech.
