"The work is great, the challenge is great, but it can be done. It must be done," he said, stressing the need to for a willingness to work together as all of the changes and merges take place.
As the study commissions within the secretariat move forward in identifying new paths and proposals, the Pope told them to be "courageous" in the criteria they choose, asking that the guiding criteria be an "apostolic and missionary one, with special attention to situations of discomfort, poverty, difficulty."
"In this way, it becomes possible to bring the Gospel to everyone, to optimize human resources, without replacing the communication of the local Churches and, at the same time, supporting the ecclesial communities most in need."
He concluded his speech stressing the need to "not let ourselves be overcome by the temptation of attachment to a glorious past," and encouraged members instead to make "a great effort of teamwork to better respond to the new communicative challenges that the culture of today asks of us, without fear and without imagining apocalyptic scenarios."
Pope Francis established the Secretariat for Communications on June 27, 2015, with the promulgation of the motu proprio, "The current communication context."
One of its primary responsibilities is the restructuring and consolidation of the Holy See's various communications outlets, which were previously ran as individual offices.
The dicastery will eventually oversee Vatican Radio, L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican Television Center, the Holy See Press Office, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Vatican Internet Service, the Vatican Typography, the Photograph Service, and the Vatican publishing house.
Msgr. Dario Edoardo Viganò, previously head of Vatican Television, is prefect of the department. On April 12, 2017, the Pope named a group of 13 new consultors, including EWTN's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael P. Warsaw
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency's senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.