Thanks to the website www.chiesaecomunicazione.com, all the papal encyclicals in the history of the Church can now be accessed free of charge by a simple click of the mouse. The new website–a huge online library containing all the teachings of the Popes–can be easily navigated by anyone, even those who are not very adept at using the Internet. By simply typing the title of the document desired, a person can obtain both the integral text of the work, as well as other pontifical documents.
Those engaged in more advanced research can select documents on the basis of a particular pontificate, a specific time span, or else a specific author, title or type of document. More than 1,100 documents from the first to the twenty-first centuries are available online in various languages.
The website aims to reach all people interested in the subject but above all those who work in ecclesiastical research and study centers or in the area of formation but who do not have access to standard libraries of printed texts.
Promoted by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, the website is under the direction of Fr. Franco Lever and Paolo Sparaci, professors of the Science of Communications Faculty of the Pontifical Salesian University, Rome. The professors deeply appreciate the backing their university has given this initiative and are also very grateful for the collaboration of Vatican Press and the Vatican.va website.
The website is dedicated to the memory of Fr. Enrico Baragli, sj (1908-2001), one of the Church’s pioneers in the study of social communications. It marks the attainment of a significant goal inasmuch as it reveals how the Catholic Church, from its origins, has always sought to keep pace with the means and forms of communication that have shaped human culture and society, from the oral culture of its beginnings up to the current digital technologies.