St. Catherine teaches us to speak clearly and courageously when the matters in question affect the Church, the Roman Pontiff or souls. In many cases we will have a grave obligation to clarify the truth, and we can learn from St. Catherine, who never backed down from the fundamentals, because she had her trust in God.
In the First Reading of the Mass, the Apostle John teaches: We proclaim to you the message that we have heard from Jesus Christ: God is light without any darkness. This was the origin of the strength of the early Christians and of the saints of all times: they did not teach a truth of their own, but the message of Christ that has been handed down to us from generation to generation. It is the strength of a Truth that is above fashions, above the mentality of a particular era. We must learn more and more to speak of the things of God with naturalness and simplicity, but at the same time with the certainty that Christ has placed in our soul. In the face of the campaign of silence systematically organized - so often denounced by the Roman Pontiffs - to obscure the truth, to silence the sufferings that Catholics endure because of their faith, or the upright and good works, which sometimes have hardly any echo in the mass media, we, each one in his own environment, must serve as a loudspeaker for the truth. Some Popes have described this attitude as a conspiracy of silence10 in the face of the good works, literary, scientific, religious, social promotion, of good Catholics or of the institutions that promote them. By the very fact of being Catholics, many mass media keep silent or leave them in the shadows.
We can do much good in this apostolate of public opinion. Sometimes we will reach out only to neighbors or friends we visit or who visit us, or through a letter to the media or a call to a radio program that asks for opinions on a controversial topic and that perhaps has a doctrinal background that needs to be clarified, responding judiciously to a public survey, advising a good book.... We must reject the temptation of discouragement, that perhaps "we can do little". An immense river that carries an enormous flow is fed by small streams that, in turn, have perhaps been formed drop by drop. May ours not be lacking. This is how the first Christians began to spread the Truth.
Let us ask St. Catherine today to transmit to us her love for the Church and the Roman Pontiff, and may we have the holy zeal to make known the doctrine of Jesus Christ in all environments, with all the means at our disposal, with imagination, with love, with an optimistic and positive sense, without leaving aside a single opportunity. And, with the words of the Saint, we pray to Our Lady: "I turn to you, Mary, I offer you my supplication for the sweet Spouse of Christ and for his Vicar on earth, so that he may be granted the light to govern the Holy Church with discernment and prudence".