Jubilees on the Press and the Radio (1925-1950)

The essay analyzes the jubilees during the pontificates of Pius XI and Pius XII, focusing specifically on the press and radio. The 1925 jubilee served to awaken religious activity, but it was also an affirmation of the Church’s power, which acquired a planetary dimension. Thanks to a special press information service, the Central Committee for the Holy Year ensured the dissemination of news about the event, which found wide coverage in the Catholic and in the non-denominational press. Along with preparing for the reception in Rome of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims in agreement with the civil authorities of the capital, the Vatican prepared also a missionary exhibition. In the same year Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King, which represented together with the jubilee an act to make the social weight of the Church felt. In 1929 Pius XI announced the extraordinary jubilee to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his priestly ordination. It was He intended to solemnize the settlement of the Roman Question with the Lateran Pacts. After the inauguration of Vatican radio in 1931 the pope could rely on a new modern tool to disseminate his messages. During the Jubilee of the Redemption in 1933 the press and the radio provided the exaltation of the universality of the Church and Pius XI’s theological-political project of the Christian reconquest of society. The project of a “new Christendom” was the aim of Pius XII, who saw in the Holy Year of 1950 the opportunity to gather Catholics around the Pope and attract atheists and dissenters (Christians non-Catholic). To this purpose, the radio one of the most important issues employed as a tool of propaganda.