My brothers and sisters in Christ, the world of digital communication, with its almost limitless expressive capacity, makes us appreciate all the more St. Paul's exclamation: Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel[1]. The Holy Father said that we priests are challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, Web sites), which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis. The Church's role is not simply to fill up space on the Web, however the Church's online presence is certainly not new. The Holy See has had its own website in place for fourteen years[2] and a year ago it created Pope2You[3], a new site with interactive features such as a Facebook application that allows users to send e-postcards with the Pope's picture and message to their friends, and the possibility of downloading the Pope's speeches and messages to iPhones or iPods. The Vatican also has its own YouTube channel, available in a number of languages, which is updated daily with news[4]. In his beautiful message for the Roman Catholic Church's 44th World Communication Day, Pope Benedict encouraged us to engage with peoples from other religions and cultures: "A pastoral presence in the world of digital communications, precisely because it brings us into contact with the followers of other religions, non-believers and people of every culture, requires sensitivity to those who do not believe, the disheartened and those who have a deep, unarticulated desire for enduring truth and the absolute [...] Can we not see the web as also offering a space for those who have not yet come to know God?". In our parish the Pastor and the members of the Pastoral Council are working already preparing a website. Following the Social Media guidelines of the United Conference of Catholic Bishops and the guidelines of the Archdiocese of San Antonio a new one will be ready soon. For the time being I would like to let you know that you can read every week The Pastors Bench online: http://thepastorsbench.blogspot.com The duty of Christians to take part in the life of the Church impels them to act as witnesses of the Gospel and of the obligations that flow from it. This witness is a transmission of the faith in words and deeds. Let us use the mass media, let us spread the gospel of Christ and let us promote a culture of respect for the dignity and value of the human person[5] ■ Fr. Agustin, Pastor.
