Subject: austraLasia' # 323, #324

LISTEN TO THE SMALL SOFT VOICES!

Ambrose Pereira

CHICAGO: 1st May -- The Religious Communications Conference in Chicago

continues as panelists and participants grapple with what the 21st century

really means for the mix of faith, media and community. The Conference

might be in Chicago, and many of the presenters from the North American

experience, but amongst the participants are members of the Asia-Pacific

region, including Salesian Fr. Ambrose Pereira, vitally interested in the

role of the media in the communication of faith to a 'world' of islands and

atolls.. It is a world that cannot isolate itself from the influence of the

big, loud voices of global monopolies, always rich, mostly white, often

famous.

"It is the small soft voices that need to be heard, not pacified" and it is

the task of the religious reporter to leave the confines of keyboard and

office and go out to meet the voices of the poor and the lost and the

forgotten.

Fr. Ambrose returns from this Conference to take up similar issues in the

immediate area of his own mission in Honiara and the Western Pacific.

Towards the end of this month, the focus shifts to Suva, Fiji, and the

UNDA-OCIC conference on media and religious communication.