Expert meeting on the "Announcement of the Gospel, media, and new technologies: what credibility for Christian testimony?"
Between April 10th and 11th 2025, the Research group Towards a Theology of Evangelization in partnership with Facoltà Teologica dell'Emilia-Romagna are about to organize the third Expert meeting of the Research Project on Evangelization. The meting will be held this time in Bologna at the Theological faculty of Emilia-Romagna.
Already thirty-five years ago, in the encyclical Redemptoris Missio (no. 37), Saint John Paul II raised the need for evangelization not to neglect the 'Areopagus of social communications': they are much more than tools of information; they are environments of life and, as such, play a fundamental role 'in guiding and inspiring individual, family, and social behavior.' It is in these digital squares that the culture of our time is shaped and transformed. It is by living in this 'global village' that disciples-witnesses are called to 'integrate' the message of the Gospel 'with new languages, new techniques, and new psychological attitudes.' And it is in these everyday places of the 'infosphere' that the issue of the credibility of Christian proclamation and testimony increasingly arises.
To address this complex theme, the expert-meeting is structured into four sessions:
1) How is public opinion formed in the age of social media, and how can these media become environments for encounter, dialogue, and evangelization?
2) What is the relationship between territorial Church and media Church? What roles can the latter play in the service of evangelization?
3) What theological insights can evangelization draw from current projects aimed at communicating the Gospel in a changing world?
4) Is the theology of evangelization more than a theology of communication? Under what conditions can it develop a theological anthropology that addresses relational, cultural, and pastoral issues, which precede and make the Church's and Christians' communicative practice effective?
