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Priests at the service of the Word, online. "The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word" This is the theme chosen by the Pope for the 44th World Communications …More
Priests at the service of the Word, online.

"The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word" This is the theme chosen by the Pope for the 44th World Communications Day, to be held on May 16. Thus the reflections begun with last year's theme on the evangelization of the continent will be furthered. This year, the emphasis on the role of the priest in this mission, is a message fits perfectly into the path of the Year for Priests. Ordained ministers are in fact invited by the Holy Father to express their charism on the Internet.
Fr. Scarpitta: "As Pope Benedict XVI also said, a priest, on the Internet, must first bring out his priestly identity. And then he must also make his consecrated heart transparent through the zeal that manifests an authentic, sincere, profound Evangelical witness on the Internet."
For this young priest, as many pastors already on the Internet, the Net allows availability to all, even those at the fringes of the Church. This is what Fr. Scarpitta experiences.
Fr. Scarpitta: "We can reach people that have nothing to do with the Church. And personally, the experience I have of Facebook or social networking and the Internet is to reach people who absolutely do not want to meet Jesus Christ. And that's where the seed is sown: a message, a word is sown, some piece of the Gospel."
In addition to these possibilities of proclaiming the word of God, the Net is also a real place of dialogue.
Fr. Scarpitta: "It allows you to send messages, and also allows us to understand how those messages resonate in the hearts of people through the feedback that users send us."
Less than a month to the closing of the Year for Priests, this message of the Pope is a call to priests to become heralds "of the good news in the new 'agora', which the current media is opening up."