The Irish writer Colum McCann believes that storytelling is the key to unity.

“The shortest distance between people is a story,” he boldly stated at the World Jubilee of Communication on Saturday, January 25, 2025, in Paul VI Hall, Vatican City, Rome.

Attended by around 10,000 journalists, editors, and communication professionals, from 138 countries.

Colum McCann, co-founder of the global non-profit Narrative 4 who works in the field of storytelling argued that the shortest distance between us is not millimetres or even picometers, but a story. This is how we find each other.

By sharing our stories with each other, our lives intertwine. Our ideas are linked. We rotate around each other. We create new energy. In doing so, we widen the net of understanding. The world becomes more patterned. Stories are important. Stories can change the course of history. Stories can save us. Stories make us what we are: we are nothing if we can’t communicate.

McCann further noted that when we are able to understand the stories of people who seem to be different and away from us, we will simply sit and listen to them. It will make us greater than ourselves.

He underlined that:

“Without a story, the proximity, and even the very existence of others, is annihilated. It happens publicly in many places: Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, but it also happens closer to home, deep within our own hearts.”

He outlined the deep meaning of storytelling, which is to show the possibility of something emerging. In times of dispute, sharing and listening to others’ stories is one of the few things that can save us.

“Storytelling is a call to action. Story listening is a form of prayer,” he uttered.

McCann called for participants to better understand the others.

“We don’t have to love one another. In fact, we don’t even have to like one another. But we must, must, must understand one another, or else we are doomed.”

We must keep going and tell our stories. We journey and become pilgrims of hope.

Written by Sr. Evifania Sinaga and Sr. Angela Siallagan