AbstractLooking back, 2016 seems destined to be remembered as the ‘Year of the Surreal,’ a 12-month period in which conventional wisdom crumbled on multiple fronts and the previously unthinkable became the new normal. This essay surveys ten of the most important issues and events of the past year from the point of view of Catholic Church communications: Pope Francis’s February trip to Mexico; release of the pope’s landmark apostolic exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia; World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland, in August; the global migrant and refugee crisis; the Brexit vote in the U.K.; the canonization of Mother Teresa in September; the U.S. presidential election; a consistory for the creation of new cardinals in November; the pontiff’s ecumenical and inter-faith outreach; and the formal close of the pope’s jubilee Holy Year of Mercy. Though the selections are subjective, they represent the developments over the past year that generated the most abundant media coverage, and, at times, public controversy.
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