SPECIAL MESSAGE

Dears friends,

I was delighted to get the list of your emails and I am very pleased to be able to write to you when the memories of our days together in Nairobi are still fairly fresh. I would like to begin by thanking you all for your whole-hearted participation in what was a demanding, but very rewarding programme. I was very impressed by the quality of your participation; by your attention to lectures and inputs, by the insightful nature of your questions and by the outcomes from the work-groups. I look forward to receiving the final version of the closing statement which I am confident will bring together all the fruits of your reflection and discussion.

More important in many ways than the formal outcomes of the Workshops, however, was the wonderful spirit of communion and solidarity that we experienced together and I hope we can create a forum that will allow us to maintain something of that sense of togetherness. I would like to invite you to use this group email facility to post any comments you might have about the Workshop and how we might follow up on it. We would also love to know about the various communications projects and activities that you are engaged with in your home countries and how your involvement in the Workshop might have impacted there.


I would like to let you know about an initiative of this Council which is addressed in particular to young people like you. To highlight the Pope’s message for World Communications Day, we launched a new website – http://www.pope2you.net/ - where you will find a range of materials related to the message, including “e-cards” with images of pope Benedict and short quotations. I would invite you to share this material with your friends: with your help, the message of the Pope could reach many young people who might not otherwise hear of it.

I will be in touch again soon to let you know about our different projects and plans. For now, I would like to wish each of you and your families every grace and blessing. I ask you to keep me in your prayers.

+ Claudio Maria Celli
President
Pontifical Council for Social Communications