The pope warned of the harm of destructive and provocative stories that repeat unverified information and deceptive or hateful messages that wear down the fragile threads that bind us together as a society.
He said he need "patience and discernment" in an age when falsification is increasingly sophisticated at the level when it is possible to create a "deepfake."
"But whereas the stories employed for exploitation and power have a short lifespan, a good story can transcend the confines of space and time. Centuries later, it remains timely, for it nourishes life," Pope Francis said.
The pope pointed to the example of Augustine's Confessions, Ignatius' A Pilgrim's Journey, St. Therese's Story of a Soul, Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed, and Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov as examples of stories that have "admirably scripted the encounter between God's freedom and that of man."
World Communications Day will be celebrated May 24 this year with the theme, "That you may tell your children and grandchildren."
"To tell our story to the Lord is to enter into his gaze of compassionate love for us and for others. We can recount to him the stories we live, bringing to him the people and the situations that fill our lives. With him we can re-weave the fabric of life, darning its rips and tears. How much we, all of us, need to do exactly this," Pope Francis said.
"Our own story becomes part of every great story. As we read the Scriptures, the stories of the saints, and also those texts that have shed light on the human heart and its beauty, the Holy Spirit is free to write in our hearts, reviving our memory of what we are in God's eyes," he said.
Courtney Mares is a Rome Correspondent for Catholic News Agency. A graduate of Harvard University, she has reported from news bureaus on three continents and was awarded the Gardner Fellowship for her work with North Korean refugees.