Use the Press to Enhance Catholicism

7. The final matter We want you to diligently concern yourselves with is this: since in these times daily papers and magazines are abused to spread false opinions and so weaken morals, you should consider that it is your turn to travel the same road and use the same means, they wickedly for destruction, you piously for edification. It will be a great help if men of virtue and learning give themselves to writing and publishing their efforts either daily or at stated times. By laying bare error gradually and carefully, truth will be disseminated and languor of minds dissipated. Then the faith nurtured in their hearts will be professed openly and strenuously for the sake of justice. What brilliant rewards there will be if such writers discharge their proper duties, since they fight for the best of causes. Clearly, as We have warned on other occasions, they must be endowed with moderation, prudence, and charity; they must strenuously defend the principles of truth and right and affirm the holy prerogatives of the Church; they must make known the majesty of the Apostolic See; and they must respect the authority of those who govern the state. In the performance of their duties, however, they must remember to love the leadership of the bishops and follow their advice. Thus, Venerable Brothers, an excellent defense may arise by which you could recall the people entrusted to you from the fountains of corruption and lead them to wells of living water.

8. Here, therefore, you have the material We want you to consider in your synods. We have no doubt that you will make every certain and deliberative effort to respond to Our desires. And that this may come about by common consent, We implore the aid of heaven, using as intercessors, together with Mary the Immaculate Mother of God, the holy Bishop Turibius and the Virgin Rose, the first of your country Peru and of the whole of South America to be addressed by the Church a flower of sanctity.

9. Meanwhile, as witness of Our love, Venerable Brothers, and as a promise of divine blessings, We most lovingly impart to all of you, to the clergy, and to your people the Apostolic Blessing.

Given in Rome, at St. Peter's, May l, 1894, in the seventeenth year of Our pontificate.

LEO XIII