“ST. FRANCIS DE SALES THE COMMUNICATOR. INTERIOR PILGRIMAGE, WISDOM IN THE ART OF COMMUNICATION

Saint Francis was an effective communicator! While he knew how to accompany people in an interpersonal relationship, he was also a man of vision, of dialogue, of discernment, of choices and decisions, of governance! Considering the context of religious tension in which he lived, we can say that he built an organisational and institutional communication strategy because he believed deeply in his mission as a man of God and pastor of the Church.

Francis de Sales built a communication policy that allowed him to build unity among his clergy and people at the diocesan level and, at the same time, represented the Catholic Church with a strong sense of fidelity and responsibility.

Pope Benedict expresses this spiritual and communicative competence very clearly:

“He is an apostle, a preacher, a writer, a man of action and prayer; committed to realising the ideals of the Council of Trent; involved in controversy and dialogue with Protestants, experiencing more and more, beyond the necessary theological discussion, the effectiveness of personal relationship and charity; entrusted with diplomatic missions on a European level, and with social tasks of mediation and reconciliation”

(Benedict XVI 2 March 2011).

Francis communicated with a great shepherd’s heart and with the vision of one who cares about defending the Church’s doctrine, accompanying its people, training its clergy, and creating a good relationship with people in the Church and society. Convinced of the importance of the art of printing, he wrote in a letter in Italian to the Nuncio in Turin in May 1598 expressing the need for a printing press:

“Among other necessary things, one is that one should have a printer in Annessi. The heretics are sending out pestilent little books every hour, whereas many Catholic books remain in the hands of the authors without being able to send them to Lyons and do not have the convenience of a printer” (L I 337).

During his lifetime, Francis de Sales, with wisdom and holiness, built a vision of intrapersonal, interpersonal, communitarian and institutional communication into a unified and connected whole. After his death, his life and teaching had an enormous influence on the Europe of his time and in the following centuries, throughout the Church and the world. As the patron saint of journalists and writers, he continues to be a model communicator even today in our digital and virtual universe.