-Jun-2000 -- EWTN News Brief
HAVANA (CWNews.com) - During the celebration of the Jubilee for Journalists on Sunday, Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino of Havana, demanded the rights for the Church to access the mass media, all of them under control of the Communist government of Cuba.
"Access to media is as important as the respect for the religious and moral convictions of the people," said the cardinal during the Mass celebrated at Havana's Cathedral.
Cardinal Ortega extensively quoted the document "Ethics on Social Communications," released on May 30 by the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications. "As the document says, media can be used to block a community and diminish the integral well-being of the people,
marginalizing or isolating them, and favoring hostility and conflict," he said.
"Ignoring or marginalizing religious experiences is another temptation of the media," said the cardinal.
Although the Catholic Church in Cuba has between 25 to 30 local magazines or newspapers, none of them have a national circulation and most of them circulate among church-going Catholics from hand to hand. The cardinal said that Catholic communicators must be "creative to keep in mind the
whole well-being of the Church," while mass media is still denied by law. |