Youth Jubilee, Parolin to influencer priests: 'Never give in to the temptation of protagonism'

On 28 and 29 July, the Jubilee of Influencers, or rather the Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, will be held, scheduled before the one dedicated to young people. Anyone involved in evangelisation through social media will participate. The person "is always a face and not a social profile" and "his or her story is a sacred story and not a set of data". This is how the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, addressed the Catholic influencers in Rome for their Jubilee. That of the web is "an environment often impregnated with hatred, fake news, falsehoods". "To make a digital mission, therefore, is to take on the wounds and questions of those who inhabit that space without giving in to anonymity, superficiality, temptations of protagonism to rediscover instead the beauty of living the communion of the Church and bringing hope," Parolin added.

The cardinal then called for 'being in the world but not of the world', 'this is required of us in order to bear witness to the truth'. Therefore we need "an attentive, active, dialoguing and missionary attitude, capable of reading the signs of the times with the eyes of faith". "Faced with this, the Church is not called to replicate pre-established schemes but to discern how to offer the Gospel with fidelity and creativity". "For this reason, rather than strategy, we must speak of a presence imbued with humanity, a witness of evangelical life and an availability to dialogue, listening and walking with others." "Evangelising in the digital world is therefore not a privilege of those who know how to handle technology but a responsibility of everyone," Parolin concluded.

'Making the digital environment new'. Monsignor Rino Fisichella, head of the Jubilee organisational machine, recalled that "today the world does not listen to influencers as such, but listens to them when they are witnesses". And Father Antonio Spadaro, under-secretary at the Dicastery for Culture, pointed out that "in an age dominated by reactions and polemics, the challenge is to communicate with compassion and vision, remaining human, 'rooted' in God and capable of igniting hope. The digital world, he stressed, needs witnesses more than technicians. Of profiles that exude mercy. Of words that do not impose, but welcome'.