Pope calls for evangelism on social networks

For the past month and a half, Pope Benedict XVI has been spreading the good word on Twitter, racking up retweets as one of the service’s most visible users. Now, he’s telling the faithful that they should be doing the same thing, making sure to keep religion in the conversation on social networks by appealing to the sensibilities of “those we wish to invite to an encounter with the mystery of God’s love.”

In a World Communications Day message entitled Social Networks: Portals of Truth and Faith; New Spaces for Evangelization and reported by News.va, the head of the Roman Catholic church stressed that social networks aren’t some kind of alternate world, they’re a significant part of many people’s daily lives. He noted, however, that “the significance and effectiveness of the various forms of expression appear to be determined more by their popularity than by their intrinsic importance and value.” These unimportant and low-value conversations make the online world an important new space for evangelization. It’s only natural for the faithful to want to share the word with the people they meet online, says the Pope, so long as they do it “respectfully and tactfully.”