The Apostleship of Prayer in cyberspace

(Vatican Radio) In this time of technological advance and growing democratization of information thanks to the possibilities of new media, why not use Social Media to inform Facebook and Twitter users of the latest news from the Catholic Church?
That’s exactly what the Jesuit Institute in South Africa is doing since it launched the Apostleship of Prayer into cyberspace!
After having shared the news of having sent out its 1 millionth SMS of Catholic teaching as part of its ongoing service to help Catholics deepen their understanding of the faith, the Johannesburg-based Jesuit Institute is again in the forefront in its use of new media as an instrument to advertise the Pope’s intentions and help people to reflect on them and deepen their understanding of them.
Vatican Radio’s Linda Bordoni spoke to the Director of the Jesuit Institute in South Africa, Raymond Perrier, about this latest “futuristic” initiative…

Listen to the interview…

Raymond Perrier explains that the Jesuit Institute , recognizing that the Apostleship of Prayer has such wonderful desire to engage ordinary people, and particularly young people with the needs of the Church and the needs of the world, decided that it should be looking at how to do that in a modern way.

He explains that the history of the Apostleship of Prayer stems from the desire of young people, particularly young Jesuit scholastics in Paris who were desperate to rush out to the missions. They were told: “you can’t go to the missions yet, but you can pray for them”.

So, Perrier says, “we were thinking: what if young people today want to go out and save the world but can’t do so yet… how do we engage with them? And the obvious thing of course is Facebook and Twitter, because that’s where we are going to find young people. In fact we are more likely to find them there than in our Churches. So we decided to find a way to use Facebook and Twitter to engage people with the Apostleship of Prayer...”

Regarding the engagement of the not so young generations, Perrier says he was harangued by a Zulu gentleman after Church recently asking “why do you do everything on Facebook and Twitter? And you don’t do anything that is written? So I showed him all the printed things we do as well, to reassure him that we haven’t left people behind”. But, he says, one of the things they are seeing is that you have to offer different kinds of media for different sorts of people. So it’s not “instead of” but “as well as”….

And what about the clergy? How are priests reacting to the initiative? Perrier says he heard about a loyal daily Mass-goer who was harangued by his priest for checking emails on his ipad during Mass. The man explained that in fact he had been using a Missal app to follow the Mass - the priest apologized and then took down the name of the app!

Perrier says they have seen with the Apostleship of Prayer is that a number of priests engage with it, join the Facebook page, and follow the Twitter feed, and not just in South Africa. For example, he says, a bishop in the French Caribbean has been following….

Perrier points out that the Apostleship of Prayer is universal and that people are encouraged to join the Facebook page: Praying with the Pope. The Twitter feed is @PrayPope. What they are trying to do, he says, is to draw in other resources from other parts of the world as well.

He says that the key thing about using Social Media is that it is bidirectional, so people have a chance to respond. He explains that at the moment they are following a theme and asking people to send in their thoughts which he hopes will have an impact on the reality of the Church.

Perrier points out that what we are seeing this year is a very strong intellectual foundation on how we use new media that came from Benedict XVIths message in January, and we are seeing it put into action by Pope Francis.

Summing up: if you are a Facebook user all you have to do is “like” the page “Praying with the Pope” – you will get regular information about the Pope’s prayer intentions, reflections on the themes he has chosen, and opportunities to discuss and share with Catholics from around South Africa and from around the world. If you are on Twitter you can follow @PrayPope.