Earlier this year Pope Francis kicked off the official 2025 Jubilee calendar by hosting communications professionals from around the world at the Vatican. One participant mused that it was strategic to have communicators as the first to attend a jubilee event. After all, he said, ‘it’s journalists who will tell the story and keep things moving along’, so they’ll help ‘shape the rest of the year’. Incidentally, this image of movement and journeying is evocative of what the Holy Father believes is the role of the Christian communicator: one of accompaniment and friendship.
‘Christian communication,’ he reflects in this year’s World Communications Day message, ‘should be steeped in gentleness and closeness, like the talk of companions on the road.’ This was the method employed by Jesus, ‘the greatest communicator who ever lived’. Jesus walked alongside the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, he says, ‘making their hearts burn within them as he interpreted events in the light of the Scriptures’.
Effective communicators ensure that ‘those who listen, read or watch can be involved, can draw close, can get in touch with the best part of themselves and enter with these attitudes into the stories told,’ says the Holy Father. ‘Communicating in this way helps us to become “pilgrims of hope”, which is the motto of the present Jubilee.’
Communication as a form of accompaniment and evangelisation was a theme explored by more than 600 communications professionals from around the world who, in the lead-up to the Jubilee of Communications event, gathered at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross for the 14th professional seminar for Church offices of communication. Three speakers, in particular, explored how their work in software development, network television and social media is aimed at fanning the flame of faith and creating spaces where people can encounter the person of Jesus Christ.
The Hallow experience: providing ‘prayerscapes’ for seekers
Erich Kerekes says it was the search for peace and prayer that led to the creation of the world’s number-one prayer app, Hallow. He and his co-founders wanted ‘something between meditation and prayer’, and once they became exposed to contemplative practices like the Ignatian examen and lectio divina, ‘it changed our lives,’ he says. ‘It totally brought us the peace that we were looking for, but also helped us feel a much deeper connection with God.’
‘We started asking: if Headspace and Calm can bring mindfulness and meditation to millions of people around the world through an app, why can’t we do the same thing, but for Catholic prayer? And so we prayed about it,’ he says. ‘We were 25 years old when it happened. We quit our jobs and invested our savings into starting Hallow.’
Since its launch in 2018, Hallow has been downloaded by more than 18 million users and is now available in multiple languages in more than 150 countries. And in February 2024, the app hit the number-one spot for the most downloads from the Apple app store, ahead of brands such as Amazon and Netflix.
‘Even though all of our content is 100 per cent Catholic, 30 to 40 per cent of our users are not Catholic, which is amazing, and it means there’s a lot of hunger out there for spirituality and for talking to God.’ It’s this statistic that’s driving Erich and the Hallow team to find more ways for people to encounter God, including the practice of visio divina (praying with sacred imagery).
‘We just finished coding video in the app,’ he says, ‘providing images for people to meditate on, as well as additional media formats that range from an actual video of somebody talking to seeing different pieces of art, or even taking you to holy places around the world and helping you pray in different “prayerscapes”, as we’re calling them.’
Thirty to 40 per cent of our users are not Catholic, which is amazing, and it means there’s a lot of hunger out there for spirituality and for talking to God’
All of this, Erich believes, is about ‘meeting people where they are’ and communicating the beauty of the Catholic faith. And while they don’t have exact data around conversion and church attendance, Erich sees evangelisation and inviting people back to the sacraments as being at the heart of their mission.
‘We really do have a heart for evangelisation, especially because me and my co-founders kind of came from this “lukewarm, falling away” spot in our own lives,’ he shares.
‘It’s of the utmost importance for us to drive people back to the sacraments, because we are a prayer app, and the source and summit of our prayer life is always going to be at the altar and in the sacraments.’
Keep things simple and find a ‘hook’
Catholic social media influencer Fr Paul-Adrien d’Hardemare OP, a French priest with a YouTube following of close to half a million, urges those working in Church communications to keep it simple and avoid topics that make no sense to young people—at least to begin with. ‘You have to find a hook and draw people in … and then you can start to go deeper.’
Importantly, says Fr Paul-Adrien, any online presence of clergy or religious must be grounded in the everyday ‘pastoral experience with the people of God as they go through the joys and challenges of their respective lives’. And in his experience, it’s the practical questions that young people want answers to. ‘How do I pray? Why do we pray to Mary? Did Jesus ever live? What does it mean to be a Christian? What are three verses in the Bible that can help me sleep because I can’t sleep?’
‘The most common question I get asked is about fasting during Lent—like, how long do I do it for?’ he says. ‘So simple questions with a very simple vocabulary. But they also want to know, “Can I go to Mass if I’m living with someone and I’m not married?” or “I’m a Christian. Who do I vote for in the next election?” They may be Christian, but they don’t know what it means [to be Christian],’ he shares. ‘By taking simple questions, you can reach those people far away from the Church.’
Young people also want to feel proud to be Catholic, says Fr Paul-Adrien. ‘In France, and I think it should be the same in Australia, Catholic young people want to be proud of their religion. So [in your communication] you have also to make sure that there is a difference between being Catholic and not being Catholic,’ he said. ‘It means something … it’s not just a fancy idea.’
He also offers some practical advice for content creators. ‘Be faithful to Christ and the Church. Pray and read the gospels … and have someone who can help you.’ He says this is particularly important when answering the challenging questions that come from people engaging online. ‘Choose someone, a priest maybe, who can help you and guide you in this.’
And while simplicity is key to his strategy, Fr Paul-Adrien also believes in being what he calls ‘extreme’—that is, addressing controversial topics that people want to discuss, albeit in a ‘delicate’ manner. ‘You have to be extreme when you talk. When you speak about justice, you speak about justice. And when people say, “As long as you’re a good person, you can go to heaven.” No, that’s not it. Read the Gospel and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You’ve got to be firm on the basis of [our] faith,’ he says. ‘We have to preach the Gospel for the soul to convert to Christ.’
Down the Mother A rabbit hole
Traditional media is not dead, says Monse Alvarado, president and chief operating officer of EWTN News. The former newsreader strongly believes that print, TV, radio and film still have a lot to offer—especially to millennials and digital natives like Gen Alpha. She says leveraging traditional media and new technologies like AI is how the Church can offer ‘meaningful digital encounters’ that lead to Jesus.
This is what EWTN founder Mother Angelica tried to do almost 50 years ago, Monse says, when the religious sister converted her monastery’s garage into a makeshift film studio to explore how to live the Catholic faith every day.
‘Behind every piece of Christian content is a very specific narrative—and invitation to join the body of Christ.’
In the same way, Monse sees streaming technologies and social media as tools to encourage people, especially the young, to go deeper in their faith. ‘Engaging in dialogue that is focused on the heart of the Church and tells real stories is as effective today as it was for the apostles,’ she says. Not only are these platforms effective, Monse says, but ‘they’re cheap.’
EWTN’s YouTube channel (which has more than 1.5 million subscribers) has seen increased engagement thanks to users—old and new—moving from their news content into their other featured content on the channel. It’s what she calls the ‘Mother A rabbit hole’.
‘They go from news to the rest of the catechetical content that’s there, and then they encounter Mother A,’ who offers young people and the ‘unsuspecting doom scrollers’ a conversation, ‘a dialogue that they’ve never heard before from a woman in a really big habit,’ says Monse.
‘I’ve often heard that this generation likes things just a little bit ugly, and that show, forgive me, is just a little bit ugly, and Mother does her best impression of this “no-frills, break-the-fourth-wall [production]”. It’s perfect for the generation that’s sick of the overproduced and inauthentic experience that’s offered by the mainstream content machine,’ explains Monse.
‘Behind every piece of Christian content is a very specific narrative—and invitation to join the body of Christ, to move away from their devices and the effects of social media and the restrictions around them, and come and join you at Mass, at Bible study or for a walk in the country, if you want to be like [the soon-to-be saint Blessed Giorgio] Frassati.
‘This is what happens when young people encounter Mother Angelica and watch clips of her advice on YouTube or on Instagram from Mother Angelica Live,’ says Monse. ‘The people are there, but they’re not going to come looking for you. You have to go fishing for them,’ she says.
‘At EWTN, we are engaging in the conversation to try to refine this Catholic perspective on digital media tools based on the initial instinct that Mother Angelica had.
‘And we all need to find our “Mother A”,’ Monse suggests, ‘those brave people who are willing to become influencers and make the sacrifice of becoming a public persona, to engage people in the world and tell them stories.’
