Pope: Vatican media must be creative, take risks, fulfill purpose

Do not let a complex organizational hierarchy stifle creativity, hamper decision-making and impede serving its actual purpose, Pope Francis told the Vatican's communications office.

He also said employees of its two outlets, Vatican Radio and L'Osservatore Romano newspaper, should be asking themselves every day how many people are they really reaching "because there is the danger — for all organizations — the danger of a lovely organization, a lovely job, but it does not get to where it has to go."

At the start of the Pentecost season, the pope visited May 24 the headquarters of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication, whose different entities supply images, news and features in almost 50 languages for radio, video, print and internet. The dicastery coordinates the efforts of the Vatican publishing house, the Vatican press office, the Vatican's video, television and photography services, Vatican Radio — which was celebrating its 90th anniversary — and L'Osservatore Romano, which was celebrating its 160th anniversary.

After visiting managers and staff in the building, the pope delivered impromptu remarks in the ground floor conference room, thanking employees for their work, and noting how the different entities were all together and well-organized.

"The problem is (making sure) that this system that is so big and complicated works," he said.

A problem he noted in Argentina, he told them, is when someone got an important new position at a company, the first thing they would do was order elegant new furnishings at an upscale office supply store without having even looked at what the office already had because it had to be "all new, all perfect, beautiful."

But the person would not ensure that the actual enterprise would work, he said, adding that "it is important that all this beauty, all this organization work (and) to work is to go, to walk" or journey.

Another example of organizational "functionalism" getting in the way, he said, is having too many "undersecretaries" or administrators serving under a director. Whenever someone needs something to get done, "they go to the undersecretary who has to fix it and who says, 'Wait a second, I'll get back to you,' and they have to call the director ... namely, it doesn't work."

It ends up being a system where the person cannot decide or have his or her own say, making it "lethal" for the organization by putting it "to sleep and killing it," he said.

He asked the dicastery's management and staff to be careful and make sure that the organization is working by helping foster creativity.

"Your work should be creative, always, and go above and beyond" the usual, he said. If everything is "too well ordered, in the end, it ends up being caged and not helping."

To make sure an organization is really working, "it is necessary to make sure everyone has enough freedom to work, that they have the ability to take risks and not go and ask permission, always permission ... this is paralyzing," he said.