WCD 2025 Theme, Sharing Hearty Hope “with gentleness”, Relevant for All: CEPACS President Urges “disarmed communication”

Reiterating the late Pope Francis’ message for 2025 WCD, the Nigerian Catholic Bishop urges “all to resist the counter values of the digital systems dominating today’s world.”

Credit: Catholic Diocese of Oyo

The counter values, he says, “splinter us into interest groups and weaken our ability to pursue the common good and common interests, while impeding our ability to walk toward God together.”

“Towards God we must walk, as Saint Augustine has said: ‘Our hearts are restless, oh Lord until they rest in thee,’" the President of CEPACS, an entity of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), says in his reflection on the 2025 WCD. 

Credit: Catholic Diocese of Oyo

Pope Paul VI established the WCD in 1967 as an annual celebration to reflect on the opportunities and challenges that modern means of social communication accord the Church to communicate the gospel message to all the ends of the earth.

Since then, the Church observes WCD, also known as the World Day of Social Communications, on the Sunday before Pentecost Sunday. This year’s 59th WCD was marked on June 1, coinciding with the Solemnity of the Ascension of Jesus Christ. 

In his reflection on the 2025 WCD he shared with ACI Africa, Bishop Badejo assures the presence of the Lord in the lives of the people of God on earth. 

Credit: Catholic Diocese of Oyo

“In our struggle against the cankerworms of communication, we are sure to enjoy the blessings of Jesus Christ who gifted the world the peace that the world cannot give or take away,” he says.

The President of CEPACS, who also serves as member of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication, since his appointment in December 2021, connects Pope Leo XIV’s message of peace during his inauguration on May 18 with the late Pope Francis’ message for the 59th WCD.

Credit: Catholic Diocese of Oyo

Both the late Pope Francis and his immediate successor, Pope Leo XIV, Bishop Badejo says, “reinforce the enduring validity of the risen Christ’s message when he said to his disciples right after his resurrection: ‘Peace be with you!”’.

Credit: Catholic Diocese of Oyo

“The valedictory message for the WCD of Pope Francis, deriving from the words of peace of Jesus Christ after his resurrection, is a key benevolent tool that this fractured world needs to heal up and brighten up with hope for all humanity,” he adds.

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Bishop Badejo recalls the late Pontiff's 2025 WCD message that he says underscores the prevalence of opposition, hostility, and abrasiveness in modern communication, particularly on social media. He says the Pontiff called on journalists and communicators to “disarm communication” and cleanse it of aggression.

Credit: Catholic Diocese of Oyo

“Such a pungent message for a world in which intimidation and exploitation of others, even though the means of communication have attained normalcy status, is not easily accepted,” the Local Ordinary of Oyo Diocese, who started his Episcopal Ministry as Coadjutor Bishop of the same Episcopal See in October 2007 says. 

Credit: Catholic Diocese of Oyo

He explains that inspired by the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year, which the late Pope Francis officially launched on the Eve of Christmas 2024 under the theme, “Pilgrims of Hope”, the late Pontiff “denounced all communication that generates not hope, but fear and despair, prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred and invited Christian communicators to communicate such hope described as a hidden virtue, tenacious and patient.”

“Christian Communicators are called upon in this way to make companions, friends, and co-travelers of others on the road of life. This is a tall order in a hostile world, but it is nonetheless achievable and necessary,” Bishop Badejo says. 

Credit: Catholic Diocese of Oyo

He appeals for an end to “the paradigm of vengeance, domination, exploitation, manipulation and aggressiveness which divide people and poising hearts against others must be jettisoned.”

“This is what it means to make communication a gentle tool of peaceful coexistence and harmony,” Bishop Badejo says, adding, “Jesus himself put this into practice when he rehabilitated the woman at the well, pardoned the woman caught in adultery, and saved Peter from drowning in the sea.”