Dolan among those named to Vatican communications council

VATICAN CITY -- U.S. Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, Australian Archbishop Mark B. Coleridge of Canberra and Goulburn, and Greg Erlandson, president of the Catholic Press Association, were named by Pope Benedict XVI to help advise the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.

The Vatican released the names of the new appointments Thursday.

Ten bishops were named new members of the council; among them are Archbishop Dolan, who is president of the U.S. bishops' conference and a member of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization, and Archbishop Coleridge, who is a member of the Synod of Bishops and Pontifical Council for Culture.

Among the 11 new consultors or advisers to the communications council are: Erlandson, who is president and publisher of Our Sunday Visitor; Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano; Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro, the editor of the influential Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica; and Dominican Sister Dominica Dipio, who is a filmmaker and head of the department of literature at Makerere University in Uganda.

The Pontifical Council for Social Communications has its roots in the 1948 establishment of the Pontifical Commission for the Study and Ecclesiastical Evaluation of Films on Religious or Moral Subjects, renamed later that year as the Pontifical Commission for Educational and Religious Films.

Headed by Italian Archbishop Claudio Celli, the council now deals with a wide variety of topics, including advertising, the Internet, pornography and violence, and communications ethics.