Vatican Radio REPORT- SHARE- Five days have passed since Pope Benedict XVI sent out his first Tweet in eight languages and according to the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, his @Pontifex handle has surpassed two million subscribers.President of the Council, Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli told Vatican Radio the Pope is tweeting because that’s what people are doing today and he wants to be present in the latest platforms of communication to share with them “words of truth.”
That means adapting his messages to fit into Twitter’s 140 character format. But the key, Archbishop Celli notes, “is not so much the number of characters available but the depth of the words he uses.”
The Archbishop says we could all stand to re-learn how to communicate using words “that always have a profound significance for others.”
Msgr. Celli points out that 140 million people actively use Twitter and forty percent of them are young people from 18 to 34 years of age. And Pope Benedict wants to be there in the dialogue with them, he says.
The Pope and the Church, Celli says, want to be where men and women are speaking together because not only are they sharing information, they’re also sharing a bit of themselves.
And, he notes the Church must do all it can to bridge the “digital divide” in Africa and certain areas of Latin America and Asia where access to social media is greatly limited.
RELIGION AND PUBLIC SPACE
Vatican City, 18 December 2012 (VIS) - The Department of Science of Education at the "Roma 3" University has organised an international seminar, concluding today, on the theme "Religion and public space".
The conference examines the following issues: the redefinition of public space in relation to the new presence of the religious; the debate surrounding the acceptance or refusal of religious symbols in public places; the ways in which the various religious presences engage with politics, culture and with the presence of symbols in public places; the concept of current religious pluralism in two nations in which Catholicism has, until recent times, occupied a position of 'monopoly' or near-monopoly and/or within protected 'religious markets'; the relationships between political and religious leaders.
The philosopher Massimo Introvigne, co-ordinator of the Observatory on Religious Freedom of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, opened yesterday's symposium with a presentation entitled "Religious freedom and relations between States and religions: different models in conflict?". This was followed by a round table discussion on "The case of Italy", "Church and State in Italy and Brazil: problems and moments", "Religious freedom, public space and judicial systems: redefinitions and new scenarios", "Secularity in pluralistic Italy", "Secularism as an ideology", and "Lay aggregations between secularisation and desecularisation".
The first day concluded with a debate on "Religion and politics in Italy".
This morning discussions focused on "The case in Brazil", in particular "Catholic Charismatic Renewal and evangelical Pentecostalism in Brazil: doctrinal divergence and political convergence", "Human rights in the Catholic Church in Brazil: from political to moral discourse", and "Religious symbols in public spaces: different configurations of Catholicism". At 10.30 a.m. the sociologist Franco Garelli gave a presentation on "Religion and public space", then at 11.30 there was a round table discussion on "Religion and politics in Latin America". The latter focused on the themes of "Marian sanctuaries as public space: Catholicism and nation in Argentina", "Argentina: the complicity of silence", "Revolutionary pastoral: some considerations regarding guerilla priests in Latin America", "The relationship between Church and State in Argentina during the last military government (1976-1983)" and "The Church of liberation and new popular governments".
The afternoon session will consist of a presentation by Enzo Pace at 3 p.m. entitled "Achilles and the tortoise: Italian Catholicism facing unprecedented religious diversity"; the seminar will then conclude with a debate on "Religion and public space".
SHARED FROM RADIO VATICANA
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