An emotional and slightly self-indulgent blog post from Rome where I have been taking part in a conference on Catholic media organised by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. There were a couple of fantastic talks which really stuck out: John Thavis of the Catholic News Service gave a talk on Catholic media covering the abuse crisis in America in the 1990s, while Ludwig Ring-Eifel of Katholische Nachrichten Agentur gave an interesting insight into the Catholic press in Germany, explaining that a Catholic press that was subsidised risked not noticing that no one was reading it any more.