Latin American Church explores digital continent

“The Church has to be present on the digital continent to spread the light of the Gospel of Christ, or someone else will”, says Mar Munoz-Visoso, Communications officer for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Munoz was part of a USCCB delegation to a conference on the "Church and digital culture: new horizons for the Church's mission" organized by the Council of Latin American Episcopal Conferences or CELAM that was held this week in Santiago, Chile.

One of the main aims of the meeting was to study how the Church can be pro-active on the ‘digital continent’, in the light of Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 Aparecida Document. .In his 2007 trip to Brazil for the 5^th Conference of bishops from across the sub-continent, the Holy Father had called on the Church leaders to stem the Churches’ decline there, a trend that has seen millions of Catholics joining Pentecostal groups or simply stop going to church. He also suggested some ways of reversing the trend:

"It is true that one can detect a certain weakening of Christian life in society overall," said Pope Benedict, "and of participation in the life of the Catholic Church, due to secularism, hedonism, indifferentism and proselytism by numerous sects, animist religions and new pseudo-religious phenomena."

"This being a continent of baptized Christians, it is time to overcome the notable absence — in the political sphere, in the world of the media and in the universities — of the voices and initiatives of Catholic leaders with strong personalities and generous dedication, who are coherent in their ethical and religious convictions," he concluded.

Taking him at his word, this week the Latin American Bishops invited experts from the world of new technologies, theologians, Church leaders and Catholics active in the media to Chile to take the first steps to over come this absence.

Pope Benedict XVI was represented by Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. Munoz says “the Latino and Hispanic community are becoming an increasingly important part of the life of the Church in the US, so we really need to make sure we understand what is going on in their Church and that we speak their language”. Listen: