Around 650 Church communicators from over 60 countries, including directors of communication from dioceses, episcopal conferences, religious congregations, institutes of consecrated life, movements, and other ecclesial entities, gathered from 22 to 24 January at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome to reflect on “Communication and Evangelization: Context, Attitudes, and Experiences” (programme in PDF).

Over three days, the conversation at this professional seminar revolved around approaches that foster and facilitate the communication of the faith: witness, science and reason, charity and service, culture and art, healing and forgiveness, digital innovations, and popular piety, among others. Following these sessions, participants joined in the Jubilee events for the world of communication.

Msgr. Fernando Ocáriz, Prelate of Opus Dei and Grand Chancellor of the university, welcomed participants, reminding them that “every aspect of Church communication is centred on evangelisation, which speaks directly to us of hope.”

Every aspect of Church communication is centred on evangelisation, which speaks directly to us of hope.

Professor Gema Bellido, a member of the organising committee, introduced the seminar by explaining the evolution of communication in recent years, noting that the digital culture has created a context in which communication is “more informal, immediate, multidirectional, dialogical, relational, person-centred, and focused on the intangible,” and that this framework brings with it opportunities and challenges when it comes to communicating the Gospel.

Fifteen reflections: from encounter to proclamation

The opening lecture was delivered by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelisation, to whom Pope Francis has entrusted the organisation of Jubilee events in 2025. The full text of his address on evangelisation in contemporary society can be found here. Here are fifteen ideas from his speech, to encourage deeper reflection on what it means to communicate the faith today:

1. “Lifestyle is a criterion for the credibility of our proclamation” of the Gospel, and thus this proclamation “must go together with a way of life that enables people to recognise the Lord’s disciples wherever they may be.”
   
2. The fundamental aim of the kerygma is “to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that all may attain salvation.”
   
3. Evangelisation is “the consequence of an encounter,” which means that, “first and foremost, we must speak of our own encounter with the Lord” and “frequently return to our origins: to the moment of encounter, from which everything flows.”
   
4. The Eucharist reminds us of the reality of our baptism; “the call to share in God’s very life, which means evangelisation.”
   
5. We are called to “be faithful to what we have received from our Lord: to be able to transmit it through a proclamation that reaches everyone, without distinction, because the content of his message is the truth about each person’s existence.”
   
6. We must spread the truth of the Christian proclamation “not as something stemming only from personal experience, but as something brought and made known through the revelation of the Son of God. For this reason, it is ‘new’ and given with ‘authority.’”
   
7. “The transmission of God’s Word must be carried out with fidelity to its content, without forgetting the audience: our contemporaries.”
   
8. The purpose of evangelisation is “to open the hearts and minds of our contemporaries so that they may discover the importance of God in their lives and believe in Jesus Christ.”

Interviews with speakers during the congress

9. We can always find “new forms of expression capable of communicating the one truth of revelation.” Because of its salvific value, “we are obliged to discover all paths and explore every avenue to reach people wherever they may be, in order to be a living transmission of the Lord’s Word.” One such avenue involves finding language that “captures attention and generates interest in the faith.”

10. “Those who are twenty years old today are digital natives; they are children of this new culture, which imposes new languages and, consequently, new behaviours.”

11. “The task of evangelisation is by no means theoretical… Quite the opposite.” We need to “reflect on the condition of our contemporaries, whose identity is very different from that of previous decades.”

12. “Clothe the proclamation of faith with the garments of hope,” For “hope, which is a universal experience, has been placed in our hands so that we may demonstrate how it can become the new language of faith.”

13. “Our interlocutors may not believe, but they certainly have hopes,” and so “rekindling our own hope, which may seem reduced to embers rather than a fire that gives meaning to life” helps us “engage with our contemporaries on common, shared ground.”

14. We must promote “an anthropology capable of adapting to the new vision of humanity, as outlined today by scientific and technological progress.”

15. “Jesus’ mandate [to bring the Gospel to all people, in every time and place] is so clear that it leaves no room for ambiguity or excuses.”