Fr. Pierre
BABIN, world-renowned author, professor and promoter of the media as a means of
evangelization, died in Lyon on May 9, 2012, at the age of 87.
He had taught at
universities in Lyon, Paris (France), Strasbourg (France), as well as St.
Paul's University, Ottawa (Canada) and the University of Dayton (Ohio) and St.
Thomas University (Florida) in the United States. Internationally, he was known
for his innovative vision for defining a new approach to catechesis in a media
age. He founded an international research and training center in religious
communications - CREC AVEX, Ecully (Lyon).
The work of Fr.
Babin continues in France: a team of volunteers organizes sessions for the
formation of seminarians, especially in Africa. For the past two years,
sessions have taken place in Burkina Faso, in Togo, in South Africa and in
Zambia. These sessions are supported and funded by the Society of St. Peter the
Apostle. Another session, funded by CREC, was organized for the bishops of the
Democratic Republic of Congo. These sessions utilize the symbolic method
invented by Pierre Babin.
The website of the
Talbott School of Theology in Los Angeles, California, has a brief biography of
Fr. Babin in which it says: “As a man of faith, he was driven by a concern to
communicate the message - the whole message of the Good News - to adolescents
who are far more impressed by sights and sounds than by words. He embraced an
adaptive stance to the changing media times with prophetic vision. He knew we
have to break out of circles that confine our vision. It is impossible to enter
into the digital world without breaking out of the print-oriented universe. One
of Babin's mantras has been ‘It is impossible to have a real intercultural
communication in the electronic age without leaving your country and your
kindred and your father's house’ (Gen 12:1). Becoming a full person in the
electronic age is not playing with the emerging new digital tools but being
born to new depths of humanity for which our previous education has not
prepared us. By 1975, he was one of the most acknowledged authorities in the
Church on audiovisual catechetics. Still, early in the 21st century
and in his early 80’s, he continued to query, explore and imagine the influence
of social networking for communicating faith in a digital age.” (Pierre Babin by Angela Zukowski)
