Pope Leo XIV last week held a mass at St. Peter’s Basilica dedicated to the young and digitally savvy members of the faithful, during the Vatican’s Jubilee of Youth. The Catholic leader called on them to create content for those “who need to know the Lord,” reported Agence France-Presse.
The influencers captured highlights of the social media summit on their smartphones.
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, now assigned to the Vatican, also told the young people that they were not only influencers but missionaries.
At a time when technology has pervaded every aspect of everyday life, the Church’s acknowledgment of the power of the internet signals a significant shift. Traditional minds have simplistically portrayed technology as a social and spiritual ill.
To be sure, technology is never altogether good, either. Then and now, it has been a powerful force that can do much good – or much harm.
Besides social media, disinformation and artificial intelligence are aspects of technology that inspire much ethical and moral debate, not only among the Catholic faithful. Generations that are growing up in a world driven by the internet will naturally have different exposures and facilities that are different from those possessed by their elders.
Different – not better, not worse.
The pitfalls are many. We have learned about too many instances of security breaches, fraud, identity theft, exploitation, and many other sinister activities that are taking place online. There is ignorance, hypocrisy, prejudice, and acrimony even against people we don’t even know.
But the potential for greater benefit in all fields imaginable is immense, as we know well and as we practice them in our own spheres.
Outside, then, of religion, there are countless opportunities for the digitally inclined to do more good in the world. Whatever belief we subscribe to, if any at all, may the temptations offered by a digitally-driven environment be held in check by the potential it offers to individuals, families, communities, institutions, and nations to do better — be better — than they currently are.
