Pope John Paul today urged governments to regulate the media, saying a rampant anything-goes mentality was damaging the family.
"The media can wreak great harm on the family when it offers an inadequate or even distorted vision of life, of the family itself and of religion and morality," he said in his weekly address to pilgrims and tourists in St Peter's Square.
The 84-year-old pontiff said parents had the greatest duty but but governments also had to "regulate the media so that it offers the truth and the common good".
This year's theme for the Church's Social Communications Day, marked today, is media and the family.