Roman Catholic Archbishop Paolo Pezzi of Moscow (1960- )
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Roman Catholic Archbishop Paolo Pezzi of Moscow decided to close Svet Evangelia (The Light of the Gospel), the only Catholic weekly in Russia. ”Given the fact that the structure of the information activity of the diocese is changing, we’ve decided to close the newspaper. It’ll be replaced by other information resources, which we hope will be more relevant to the present state of affairs”, Viktor Khrul, the editor-in-chief of Svet Evangelia, told Interfax-Religion on Tuesday. An editorial under the headline “We don’t say farewell forever…” was published in the last issue of the newspaper on 25 December. “You’re holding an historic issue of the newspaper Svet Evangelia. This is our last issue. All explanations that we need to be make about the closing will be made [at the proper time”, the editorial read. Pezzi’s predecessor, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, now archbishop of Minsk and Mogilyov in Belarus, established the weekly newspaper in 1994. An Italian priest, Fr Bernardo Antonini, first came up with the idea to establish the weekly. Reporters of the Moscow-based newspaper worked in St Petersburg, Saratov, Sochi, Novosibirsk, Tula, Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Magadan, and Vladivostok.
25 December 2007
Interfax-Religion
Editor’s Note:
This is an illustration of how information dissemination has changed over the last decade. With the increased use of the Internet for both personal and corporate communication, it is clear that the Catholics in Russia are re-aligning their information strategy to meet current realities. One must note that His Holiness Patriarch Aleksei is leading a similar move in Orthodox circles. Is the print newspaper dead? By the way, Mr Khrul went on to work at Interfax, so, one can say that the RCs gained a stronger voice at this media outlet… not a dumb move, no?
BMD
