WRITTEN BY REV. FR. MARTIN ANUSI
World Communications Day (WCD) is celebrated every year on the Sunday before the Pentecost Sunday.

It began in 1967, following the desire of the Second Vatican Council to see how the achievements of the communication media can best be used to promote gospel values. Thus, every year the Church chooses a theme for the celebration. With the theme she invites and encourages all to reflect on the opportunities and challenges communications media offer us in the light of the gospel message and human development.
Since its first celebration on Sunday, May 7, 1967, Pope Paul the sixth and his successors have continued to invite and encourage us to reflect on this essential and evolving culture of our time in order to help make the best use of it and minimize its wrong use.
This year’s celebration holds today. The theme chosen by the Holy Father, Pope Francis, for this year is “The Truth Will Set You Free”, (John Chapter 8, verse 32) Fake News and Journalism for Peace.
The Pope, in his message, reminds us that communicating is an essential part of God’s plan for us, God’s gift, through which we can express and experience all that is true, good, and beautiful about our lives, history, memory, and experiences. Communications, according to him, must be at the service of truth.
When this gift yields to human selfishness, the Pope warns, it could become instrument of deception, disinformation or false information, with a view to distort, deceive, and manipulate others, especially in the era of the fast-changing digital and technological systems. According to him, the spread of fake news is aided by the manipulative use of the social media, where the challenge of unmasking and eliminating fake news is partly difficult because “people interact in homogeneous digital environments impervious to differing perspectives and opinions.” This, he said, makes it difficult to confront the source of the information or to challenge it, and “risks turning people into unwilling accomplices in spreading biased and baseless ideas.”
Countering falsehood is a vocation for everybody, the Pope said. He lauded wonderful efforts being made to create programmes of media education, to help people interpret and assess media information.
He also praised institutional and legal initiatives, as well as efforts by tech and media companies “in coming up with new criteria for verifying the personal identities concealed behind millions of digital profiles.” An antidote to the virus of falsehood, he said, is purification by the truth that sets us free.
In his message, the Catholic Bishop of Awka, Most Reverend Paulinus Ezeokafor, taking a cue from the pope, spoke on the theme: “They Ordered Them Not to Speak in the Name of Jesus” (Acts 5:40): Overcoming the Challenges to Our Communicating the Truth.
The Bishop said that, since Christ is the truth, communicating the truth means greater closeness to Christ, while distorting it means distancing ourselves from Him. To be messengers of truth, we must be able to face many obstacles to truth in our world of today, starting from those within us, the self, and the fear of external powers, inducements, and entanglements.
He challenged us to confront and defeat the power of selfishness. He said we can do this only if we become truly Christians by opening ourselves up to the powers of the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus whose resurrection gave us power over sin and falsehood.

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