Church communication highlights 2019

Abstract The year 2019 was one of the hardest for Francis’ pontificate, and in terms of communication one of the most complicated given the difficulty and variety of the questions he has addressed. Necessarily limited, this selection of ten news stories is not based on their immediate repercussion but on their consequences for this papacy. The order is mainly chronological so as to show the development of the papacy from an informational perspective. As a working methodology, after choosing ten stories together, each author has described five of them. In our opinion, the ten most relevant Catholic news stories of 2019 are: World Youth Day in Panama 2019; the signing of a joint declaration with Islam; the February summit on child abuse in the Church; the attacks on Christians in Sri Lanka; relations with Vladimir Putin and the Orthodox world; the changes in the Vatican Press Office; the Vatican denouncement of pressure from China; the Synod on the Amazon; the migrants’ crisis; and the ‘formal’ reform of the Curia