Last Saturday, January 25, during the meeting with the pilgrims of the Jubilee of Communicators, Francis decided not to pronounce the prepared text - a long one - and to give us only a brief recipe: to communicate is to go out of oneself and to go out to the meeting of the other. As he walked down the central aisle of the Paul VI classroom , I was able to address a few words to him, or rather, one word, the one that came to me at that moment, and I said to him: Francis, courage. I was surprised that the unread text, published later, dealt precisely with this virtue, which he had practiced heroically throughout his life. 

He knew to whom he was saying it, professionals and teachers of communication. Throughout his pontificate, his gestures and words have contained more or less explicit lessons for those of us who dedicate ourselves to this science and profession that demands true courage. Although his contributions are very numerous, and twelve of his messages have been published on the occasion of the World workshop on Social Communications, I will focus on four particularly eloquent lessons. 

The Pope in white has been a lover of grays, as a consequence of understanding that reality, the person, is complex. Recently, in his response to Luciano Fontana, director of the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, he said, referring to the war: "There is a great need for reflection, for calm, for a sense of complexity". It is enough to know his life to understand how his response to the political, social and pastoral circumstances in which he lived, led him to embrace complexity; because behind them there were individual persons, who were worth for him, as for Jesus Christ, everything. 

Francis, rather than being a victim of polarization, has been a victim of simplification, of the absence of reflection that leads to superficiality, stereotyping and conflict. That is why, already at the beginning of his pontificate, he wanted to point out in his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangeli Gaudium, his famous four principles related to bipolar tensions, with the intention of overcoming them: time is superior to space; unity prevails over conflict; reality is more important than the idea; and the whole is superior to the part. A true bequest of communion. 

His pontificate teaches the profession the courage to approach complexity without fear, with seriousness, work and thought. And therefore, promote from a manager and true exercise of communication, the communion of people. 

In November 2021, Pope Francis decorated Mexican journalist Valentina Alazraki with the Cross of the Order of Piana for her forty years of professional service as Vatican correspondent. In his speech, the Pope, among other things, thanked journalism for its work of "lifting the rug" to uncover and make known "what does not go", referring in particular to the abuse crisis in the Church. 

Francis had to lift difficult rugs, and he was trained by his responsibilities both in the Society of Jesus and in the Archbishopric of Buenos Aires. Lifting carpets requires courage, because it has consequences, also personal, such as those that led him to exile in his dark night in Cordoba, at the beginning of the nineties. It also has consequences for journalism, sometimes silenced by other powers, and for institutional communication, in the exercise of transforming and improving the institutions for which it works. The courage of commitment to the truth, even if it hurts, is a lesson that our profession should always be reminded of. 

Francis wanted to bring to the forefront a dimension of the Church, synodality; he convoked a Synod dedicated specifically to this topic, which led to open in all the dioceses of the world processes of participation, as part of a great exercise of listening. Listening requires being willing to give up your positions, to discern the essentials from the accidents, to take seriously those who speak, to disappoint expectations as a result this process...in the final, and again, to embrace complexity. 

On the other hand, there have been frequent references to listening as an essential part of the work of communication. In 2022, "Listen with the ears of the heart" was the motto of the Message of the Social Communications workshop . A lesson for a profession that identifies itself with telling, sometimes forgetting that this is the consequence of an articulated and profound exercise of listening to the public and the social context. 

Finally, Francis has often been spoken of as the Pope of gestures. In his behavior, his attitudes, he has entered into communion with countless people, not only those who have been the direct recipients of these gestures, but those of us who have been able to see the truth, beauty and love behind them. 

Perhaps that is why the One whom he loved so much wanted him to leave this world in this way. His last gestures required a special courage, because of his delicate health status , and there he was, in a prison, on Holy Thursday, as he was every year. And with a particularly strange gesture, which caused silence and concern among the colleagues of the conference room Stampa, he walked for the last time, for an hour, St. Peter's place , yesterday, Easter Sunday. 

May he rest in peace who did not want to rest for building peace with the courage of his life.