Pope Francis' message for the 2015 World Communications Day workshop has the following title degree scroll:"Communicating the family: privileged environment of meeting in the gratuitousness of love" (January 23, 2015).

With this degree scroll it is proposed that the Christian family be - in its existence, in its authenticity and in the beauty of its project made reality - a school of communication and a subject of communication. Even more, that the family be the very message of its proposal before the world; of that communication that is "making family" inside and outside the home. "The family is the first place where we learn to communicate", to communicate in a more authentic and human way.

1. The Pope builds his message - which we can structure in 10 steps - on the background of Mary's visit to her cousin Elizabeth (cf. Lk 1:39-56). Mary's greeting is answered by Elizabeth's son from her womb, followed by Elizabeth's exclamation blessing Mary for the fruit of her womb, and then comes Mary's joyful singing of the Magnificat. In that scene, Francis observes, communication is sample as"a dialogue that is interwoven with the language of the body".

  And he explains: "To exult in the joy of meeting is, in a certain sense, the archetype and the symbol of any other communication that we learn even before coming into the world". This is why"the maternal womb that welcomes us is the first 'school' of communication, made of listening and of corporeal contact , where we begin to familiarize ourselves with the external world in a protected environment and with the reassuring sound of the beating of the mother's heart". In such a way that "this meeting between two beings at the same time so intimate, although still so strange to each other, is a meeting full of promise, it is our first experience of communication. And it is an experience that unites us all, because we were all born of a mother".

  2. Secondly, after birth we remain in the family as a "bosom made up of diverse persons in relationship". And, therefore, as"a place where we learn to live together in difference" (EG, 66). In the family there are "differences of genders and generations, which communicate first of all because they welcome each other, because there is a bond between them. And the wider the range of these relationships and the more diverse the ages, the richer is our living environment".

  3. From the family bond and within the family - Francis continues - we learn to speak the "maternallanguage ", the language of our ancestors. And we can give to others what we ourselves have received, including the ability to generate life and to do good and beautiful things."We can give because we have received, and this virtuous circle is at the heart of the family's ability to communicate and to communicate; and, more generally, it is the paradigm of all communication."

4. Fourth step, in the family is transmitted that"fundamental form of communication which is prayer". Parents pray for their newborn children. Then the children learn the simple prayers that also help them to pray for other people, for grandparents and other relatives, for the sick, for the most needy. "Thus," the Pope points out, "most of us have learned in the family the religious dimension of communication, which in Christianity is imbued with love, the love of God that is given to us and that we offer to others.

5. Fifth, in the family we learn to go out of ourselves to others and to other families. Here "communication is manifested as finding and the construction of proximity"; that is, "it is the ability to embrace, support, accompany, decipher glances and silences, laugh and cry together, among people who have not chosen each other and yet are so important to each other".

In this way we come to "reduce distances, going out to each other meeting and welcoming one another is a reason for gratitude and joy," he said, returning explicitly to the scene of Mary's visitation to Elizabeth. "The family is also alive if it breathes by opening up beyond itself, and families that do this can communicate their message of life and communion, can give comfort and hope to the most wounded families, and make the Church itself grow, which is a family of families." The Pope speaks of this "making family" that also spreads from families to other families and makes the Church grow; in turn, this growth of the Church supports and makes families grow. 

6. Sixth step, the family is the main school to "experience one's own and others' limits, the small and big problems of living together, of putting oneself at agreement". Since there is no such thing as a perfect family, we should not be afraid of imperfection, of fragility, or even of conflicts; rather, we should learn to face them in a constructive way. And for this reason, "the family in which, with its limits and sins, everyone loves each other, becomes a school of forgiveness"; because, says Francis, forgiveness is a dynamic of communication: a communication that wears out, breaks down and that, through repentance expressed and accepted, can be resumed and increased.

7. Seventh, the family as a school of listening, respect and dialogue: "A child who learns in the family to listen to others, to speak respectfully, expressing his own point of view without denying that of others, will be a builder of dialogue and reconciliation in society. And in the same vein, families with children affected by one or more disabilities teach us a lot. "A deficit in movement, senses or intellect is always a temptation to close oneself in; but it can become, thanks to the love of parents, siblings and other friends, a stimulus to open up, share, communicate in an inclusive way; and it can help the school, the parish, the associations, to be more welcoming to everyone, to exclude no one".

8. Eighth, the family is "a school of communication as a blessing" in a world where so often people curse, speak evil, sow weeds, pollute our human environment with gossip, where at times it is as if hatred and violence inevitably prevail, when families are separated from one another by stone walls or by the no less impenetrable walls of prejudice and resentment. The only way to break the spiral of evil, to bear witness that good is always possible, to educate children in fraternity, "is in fact to bless rather than to curse, to visit rather than to reject, to welcome rather than to fight".

9. Ninth, we should consider the place of modern means of communication in the family, for the communication that is and takes place in the family. On the one hand, "they can hinder it if they become a way of avoiding listening, of isolating oneself from the presence of others, of saturating every moment of silence and waiting, forgetting that 'silence is an integral part of communication and without it there are no words with a density of content' (Benedict XVI, Message for the XLVI World Communications Day,Message for the XLVI workshop World Communications Day, 24 January 2012).24 January 2012). On the other hand, "they can foster it if they help to tell and share, to remain at contact with those who are far away, to give thanks and ask for forgiveness, to make meeting possible again and again". Here too, parents must be the first educators with the financial aid of the Christian community, to teach how to live in the world of communication according to the criteria of the dignity of the human person and the common good.

10. Tenth and lastly-and here Francis invites us to follow the best suggestions of the best contemporary communication-"the challenge we face today is, therefore, to relearn how to narrate, not simply to produce and consume information. And at the same time he warns: "Information is important but it is not enough, because it often simplifies and sets differences and different visions against each other, inviting us to take one side or the other, instead of favoring an overall vision".

The Argentine Pope concludes by inviting us to live the family not as a field in which opinions are communicated, or a terrain in which ideological battles are fought, or an abstract model to be defended or attacked; but as"an environment in which one learns to communicate in proximity and a subject that communicates, a 'communicating community'". In this sense, the family continues to be a great resource of humanity, "a space where we all learn what it means to communicate in the love received and given". There we learn that "to narrate means rather to understand that our lives are interwoven in a unitary plot, that the voices are multiple and that each one is irreplaceable".

In fact, the Christian family is a school of communication because it communicates the beauty and richness of the divine plan, and thus does not simply defend the past but works for the future.