Abstract

The communication of topics “abuse of power” and “clergy sexual abuse of minors” in the Catholic Church’s own media has recently changed dramatically. The news service of the Vatican (“Vatican News”) discussed the topics practically daily in 2018. The aim of this paper is to map part of the work of Dicastery for Communication established by Pope Francis in 2015 (originally as a “secretary”) with the ambition to become the model of reform for the whole Roman Curia. From the observation of dicastery’s work in first three years of its existence, we can conclude that reform is supposed to be not only technological (unifying of disparate Vatican media outlets) but also content related (more faithful to the mission of Christian service and also to the Catholic teaching represented by the documents about media, ready to respond to scandals of Church properly and professionally). The quantitative content analysis of the newscast will be used as a method for understanding the period between January 2018 and March 2019 in this case study. The patterns, genres, and other forms of communication will be analyzed and interpreted. The attention will be also paid to understanding the broader and long-lasting communication trends, which the Church uses in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council which now also offers broad possibilities of employing digital communication technologies.