More than two hundred communicators of religious life gathered online on 5 and 6 October during the UISG event "Towards a Full Presence: Pastoral Reflection on Engagement with Social Media", organised in preparation for the First International Meeting of Communication for Religious Life to deepen the pastoral document published by the Dicastery of Communication on 28 May this year.

Patrizia Morgante, head of the UISG project Communicating Religious Life, and Sr. Paola Fosson, fsp, communication manager of the USMI were moderators of the event.

Sr. Paola, welcoming the participants and introducing the two speakers of the days, said that "we are living stones of a living Church" and that "social networks must be seen as people to connect with, to meet."

Monsignor Lucio Adrian Ruiz, secretary of the Holy See's Dicastery for Communication and speaker of the first day of the event, explored the concept of culture as a digital reality and not as a technological tool. The monsignor emphasised that "a tool is used, culture on the other hand is lived and shared."

Indeed, listening to Pope Francis' words on communication, one realises that the exhortation is to integrate the message in the light of the culture one lives in, of the historical moment one is living through, because we are all "fathers and sons and daughters of a culture".

So how can we feel like missionaries and missionaries?

The root, explains the Monsignor, is in love because "the origin is in the mandate, in the Spirit [...] and we, consecrated men and women, have seen and heard the Lord, we have experienced him" and this, we can only tell using the tools that thanks to technological development we have at our disposal.

"Communication speaks of proclamation. Proclamation summons us all and always. Communication is not technical; it is a pastoral encounter with everyone and everywhere in the world," said the secretary of the dicastery, emphasising that the perspective and objective of the Church's communication through social media is to evangelise by becoming digital missionaries.

The speaker of the second day was Sr. Rose Pacatte, fsp, renowned expert in media education and literacy, film critic and writer, who proposed interesting case studies on the topic of both Church and business communication, comparing them and connecting the field of social media to that of artificial intelligence.

Picking up on a part of the document, the one that makes explicit that the goal of evangelising communication is not to create and share content but to listen to each other, as Christians, spiritually and reciprocally, Sr. Rose said that "the role of social media is both personal and social" and that all forms and tools of the Church's communication are aimed at friendship and peace, and that is why we must take care of and discern them. 

In both meetings, thanks to the small sharing groups, participants were able to discuss and reflect together on the pastoral reflection document on interaction with social media.