Put spirituality over strategy, Vatican official tells Catholic influencers
- biblelightspromotion
- 1 day ago
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From the Website of CBCP
Put spirituality over strategy, Vatican official tells Catholic influencers
Msgr. Lucio Adrian Ruiz, secretary of the Dicastery for Communication, appears on screen before more than 100 participants at a gathering of digital missionaries and Catholic influencers at the Pope Pius XII Center in Manila on Dec. 5, 2025. CBCP NEWS
A Vatican communications official told Filipino Catholic digital influencers on Friday that online evangelization must be built on deep spirituality rather than content strategies, warning that digital mission fails when it turns into a performance.
“Let no one think digital mission is merely technique or strategy,” said Msgr. Lucio Adrian Ruiz, secretary of the Dicastery for Communication, while appearing via live video streaming from the Vatican.
“It is spirituality incarnate in a new culture that opens our minds and our vision to go out to reach the people who need and search for meaning,” he said.
Ruiz delivered his message to more than a hundred “online missionaries and Catholic influencers” gathered at the Pope Pius XII Catholic Center in Manila on Dec. 5.
He said the Church is now living “a unique moment” in its missionary history as more people seek guidance and accompaniment in digital spaces.
Ruiz urged content creators to ground their work in compassion rather than metrics, echoing Pope Francis’ call to seek the “suffering flesh of Christ” online — in chats, comments and searches filled with anguish.
“Our mission is not by how much content we produce or how many followers we have,” Ruiz said. “It is to accompany, listen and respond with tenderness.”
He also stressed that digital evangelization must be carried out in communion with local bishops, whom he described as “the visible principle of unity” in the Church.
Wherever a bishop trusts his digital missionaries, he added, the Church becomes more missionary and “more deeply inserted into people’s real lives.”
The priest called on influencers to build genuine communities beyond their posts, saying evangelization is incomplete without spaces where people can pray, ask questions and support one another.
“These make the digital realm more than a screen. They make it a place of Church,” Ruiz said. “If we do not build community, we evangelize alone and a missionary alone grows cold with grief.”
He also warned against fueling online division, urging Catholic communicators to “repair the nets” and resist the temptation to polarize for engagement.
“Our presence must heal,” he said. “It must help the Church appear as a network guided by the Spirit, not by algorithms.”
He also reminded the participants that the heart of digital evangelization is discipleship, not branding. “We are missionaries before we are creators,” he said. “If we live this, the digital mission becomes a small and permanent Pentecost that crosses screens and reaches real life.”
CBCP Website
Article links
https://cbcpnews.net/cbcpnews/put-spirituality-over-strategy-vatican-official-tells-catholic-influencers/
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