April 10, 2010. Father Jose de Jesus Palacios can type as good as he can deliver a homily. He’s a self proclaimed internet enthusiast and the creator of a new social networking site strictly for those who wear clerical collars.
To commemorate the Year for Priests, Father Palacios launched Adsumus.ning.com. Adsumus is Latin for ‘to be present’.
Fr. Jose de Jesus Palacios
“I think we’ve gone through the formation to become leaders in our communities. I believe we also need to continue being leaders of our faith in cyberspace.”
Here priests from all over the world can share video, pictures and have open dialogue, think of it, like Facebook, that only allows priests to join.
Yet getting priests to do just that, has been the hard part. Father Palacios points out some priests may still fear the internet.
Fr. Jose de Jesus Palacios
“There is still that fear there. Currently there are a little more than 40 members. But I think it’s a fear of the unknown. Sometimes people fear what they don’t know.”
Benedict XVI’s message on World Communications Day stressed the need for more priests to use the web to preach and reach out, especially to young people.
In fact, while the web is seeing a bigger presence of priests online, especially on Catholic based social networking sites like HI5.com and XT3, there’s still no telling how many priests are using logging on.
A study called Picture Project, is currently crunching those numbers and is expected to publish results later this year.
Fr. Jose de Jesus Palacios
“We nee to be witnesses of God’s love in the real world and witnesses of that same love with people in the virtual world”. “Just like the pope says, the internet is a continent we need to evangelize.”
In the meantime, Father Palacios hopes more priests will join his network. A network in a continent where the Catholic Church is making strides one click at a time.
MC
JM
