The College of Cardinals chose a few hours ago as the new pope Cardinal Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires. He took the name Francis. PR Daily on this occasion points out communication challenges awaiting the new pope.
Communication of the Catholic Church
The Pope will have to ensure that the Church finally learns how to communicate with believers in the context of modern times. It's called the new evangelization. The aim is to establish a link between the Church, the Catholics and the potential Catholics.
The Catholic Church is still reeling from scandals concerning sexual abuse of children, addressing the role of women in the Church, and furthermore, it has its weight in the world's political views. However, the Curch still often acts like 2000 years ago. The solution is to modify communication.
The will to communicate
This is the best solution. The Pope must show his humanity and a good will to communicate. Whether the view of the Church changes or not is secondary in this case; the important thing is the gesture.
The new Pope should act like someone who wants to listen to others and is willing to talk to them.
Social networking
Pope Benedict made the first important step of Vatican on social media. He was pictured when sending the first tweet via iPad. His followers, however, were soon disappointed. Twitter certainly did not allow them to be in touch with the Pope as they hoped.
If the new pope wants to succeed, he should be an e-pope. He must show the world that he actually reads some tweets and responds to them.
Influence beyond social media
The most important for Pope Francis will be to get out there and travel. Personal communication is always the most important. Twitter and Facebook will only assist.
Language
The new pope is in the same role as all managers: they must be able to convey their vision to people so that they will understand, believe and identify with it. To do this, they must use the right unifying language.
Due to language errors, Pope Benedict experienced several minor PR crisis. Recall the sensitive passages about the Prophet Mohammed or the rehabilitation of a bishop who denied the Holocaust. Later, Vatican rather hired a specialist from Fox News as a communications adviser.
Decentralization of communication
The Church must continue to have a dialogue on controversial issues, such as contraception, gay marriages, etc. If it did not, it would not go with modern times. To this end, the Pope should decentralize communication and keep it as much as possible at local levels. People, who are concerned in such dialogues, are in fact real members of real parishes.
Pope Francis had previously demonstrated that he is not willing to avoid serious issues. He even criticized some of his colleagues as hypocrites. However, a change in communication after 2000 years will not be easy.
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