In a historic move affirming the Church’s mission in the digital age, the Vatican will host Catholic content creators, evangelists, and influencers from around the world this July for a special Jubilee celebration for those spreading the Gospel online.
The Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers will take place July 28-29 and be hosted by the Dicastery for Communication. It will include nearly 1,000 in-person participants, according to Vatican News, along with many who will take part online.
“We recognize that this is where people are spending their time, this is where their attention is focused, and we the Church need to be there!” says Katie McGrady, host of The Katie McGrady Show on The Catholic Channel and of the podcasts Ave Explores, Like a Mother, and Family Mass Prep. “If that’s whether people are… then the Church needs to be in that space.”
McGrady, who has more than 55,000 followers on her X account and serves as a Vatican analyst for CNN, is happy that Catholic influencers are being included in the Jubilee year in such an intentional way. “The Jubilee is important because the Church is giving a name to this work and recognizing that this is a unique group of people.”
According to Vatican News, the Jubilee event will consist of three phases: “spiritual,” “formative,” and “celebratory.” The first will give participants the chance to walk through the Holy Door, which is only open on Jubilee years and offers an indulgence for those who meet the requirements. The formative phase will consist of talks and workshops in the Auditorium Conciliazione. The celebratory phase is a festival in Piazza Risorgimento centered around art and music.
Registration for the in-person event is closed, but those interested can still sign up for digital events at the event’s website, digitalismissio.org. Some of the formation sessions will also be live-streamed on YouTube at the channel La Iglesia Te Escucha (“The Church is listening”).
During his pontificate, Pope Francis encouraged the faithful to use the internet and social media to spread the Gospel. He also warned that, if misused, the internet can “entrap,” and we must be sure we use it “to liberate, to protect a communion of people who are free,” according to Vatican News.
Pope Leo XIV has also expressed a desire to address how technology can be used for good. Soon after becoming pope, he explained that he chose his papal name in part in order to continue Pope Leo XIII’s work of addressing the industrial revolution.
The Pope said, “In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour.”
McGrady says digital missionaries and Catholic influencers need to be careful of the temptation to seek money or worldly fame. She says the solution is to stay close to the Church and to be concerned with “the goodness of the Gospel.”
>> Century-old Kentucky church built with field stones is among pilgrimage sites for Jubilee Year <<
The post Jubilee year to include first Vatican event for Catholic ‘influencers’ appeared first on CatholicVote org.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Felix Miller
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://catholicvote.org and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.