Last week I was discussing with students in university classes the role of the media as an essential tool in our days to keep us informed, to feel solidarity with world problems and to make free decisions with knowledge of cause.

We concluded by highlighting the importance of cultivating serenely critical attitudes in the face of the negative effects that a fiducial surrender, of those who accept without reflection everything that is said in the media, produces in the minds of readers, viewers and listeners so often shaped by a kind of "single thought", "politically correct".

As a practical exercise, I proposed to the students the selection of headlines and front pages reflecting current news, compiling them from the most ideologically varied and even opposing media so that they could compare them and draw their own conclusions. From what they say, they are enjoying...

Simultaneously, I received an invitation to participate by telephone in a local television program discussion in which it was asked if Pope Francis is changing the doctrine of the Church on marriage, making reference letter to his statements during his return from his last apostolic trip to Sri Lanka and the Philippines. The editor, the presenter of the program and the majority of the interviewers and probably the audience present on the set, with the best intentions in the world, were left with the idea that in contrast to the Church's previous and continuous support for large families, Francis was now affirming that "we should not have children like rabbits". That is to say that the current Pope is against large families...or at the very most, that he is not in favor of large families.

During the brief intervention, I dared to suggest that information ethics calls for going to the sources and trying to understand the statements in their context.

In addition to the Pontiff's focus on the problems of poverty, hopeful call for evangelization and praise to Filipinos for their faith, joy and family generosity in accepting children, his sentence sounded like this: "Some believe that, to be good Catholics, we have to be - pardon the expression - like rabbits. No. Fatherhood manager. This is clear and for this there are in the Church the marriage groups, there are the experts in this subject, there are the pastors, and it is sought. I know of many licit solutions that have helped in this" (press conference on the plane during the return trip).

Undoubtedly, the Pope was correcting a general distorted perception of what Catholic doctrine is about the acceptance of children in marriages, and his message accentuated the idea of what "paternity" means manager".

Earlier Francis had praised the generosity of Filipino families who joyfully showed him their children as a gift from God, with particular tenderness if they were sick or disabled. His words were framed in the first thing that had caught his attention: "That gesture of the parents, lifting up the children, so that the Pope could bless them. The gesture of a father... there were many of them: they lifted up their children when he passed by where they were. A gesture that is not seen elsewhere. As if to say: "This is my treasure, this is my future, this is my love, for him it is worth working, for him it is worth suffering". It is an original gesture that springs from the heart" (idem).

But the pope also emphasized the gesture of the mothers and the courage of the sick children: "Another gesture: the mothers who carried their sick children in their arms; and also the mothers who carried them there. The mothers did not lift their children so much... up to here... [in their arms]. Yes, you saw many disabled children, with disabilities that are a bit impressive: they did not hide their children, they brought them close to the Pope to be blessed: "This is my son, he is like this, but he is mine". All mothers feel and do the same, but the way they do it, that's what caught my attention" (Idem).

Perhaps these remarks of the Pope would have been enough to understand what he was referring to in the comparative phrase with the "rabbits", by the way, introduced with "pardon the expression". But I found it interesting to recall the meeting of Francis with the Associations of Large Families on the previous December 28 in which his positive perception of them was manifested, for example with these words, also vindicating the lack of support of politicians for the family institution: "Dear parents, I am grateful for the example of love for life, which you guard from conception to the natural end, even with all the difficulties and burdens of life, and which unfortunately public institutions do not always help you to carry forward. You rightly recall that the Italian Constitution, in article 31, calls for particular attention to large families; but this does not find an adequate response in practice. It remains in words. I wish, therefore, also thinking of the leave birth rate that has been registered in Italy for a long time, a greater attention from politics and public administrators, at all levels, in order to give the expected support to these families. Every family is a cell of society, but the large family is a richer, more vital cell, and the State has every interest to invest in them" (speech to the National association of large families in Italy, December 28, 2014).

How many headlines between December and January highlighted the Pope's denunciation of public institutions for their lack of support for families?

But, in case there was still any doubt, during the audience of January 21, Francis' voice sounded this clear on classroom Paul VI: "I heard some people say that families with many children and the birth of so many children are among the causes of poverty. It seems to me to be a superficial opinion. I can say, we can all say, that the main cause of poverty is an economic system that has removed the person from the center and put the god of money in his place; an economic system that excludes, always excludes: it excludes children, the elderly, young people without work... and creates the throwaway culture that we live in. We have become accustomed to seeing people discarded. This is the main reason for poverty, not large families" (General Audience of January 21, 2015).

Undoubtedly, "superficial opinion" has prevailed in the information world. To avoid this pathology that distracts from the deep problems that affect our time, such as poverty, and above all anesthetizes the consciences of those who would have to face them, I think that from the university we can continue to foster a new critical spirit capable of discerning the wheat from the chaff in the face of the media bombardment. A fascinating urgency that favors freedom.