A Vatican Official Preaches for Changes

Archbishop John P. Foley, the Vatican’s point man on communications, asked a roomful of ad executives in Baltimore to be saints. Foley, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said that the nature of advertising might also produce “an occasional martyr.” A graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism and the former editor of the diocesan newspaper in Philadelphia, Foley is president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications. Foley said that while advertising plays an important role in the economic system, it can be demeaning when it uses sex and nudity to sell products. He also said that advertising that positions products as necessary to happiness undermine values and make people with limited incomes feel as if they are second-class citizens. Many in the advertising business have taken issue with the Vatican’s attitudes on advertising.