Rome (Italy). «From connection to communion. From lies to truth. From “like” to “Amen”». These are the “passages” indicated by Pope Francis in the Message for the 53rd World Communications Day, entitled “We are members of one another (Eph 4:25). From social network communities to the human community” which is the common thread for the Reflection and In-depth Meeting on Communication Issues, now in its eighth edition, to be held on April 26-27, 2019 at the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome.
The participants are 160, including young Salesian religious of Don Bosco and Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, FMA Temporary Professed from the educating communities of Italy and of Religious Congregations, and young people of the Salesian Family groups, will examine how the digital connection can be translated into communion both online and offline to live, as the Pope says, “the encounter in flesh and blood through the body, the heart, the eyes, the gaze, the breath of the other”.
The program is intense. It starts Friday, April 26, 2019 at 4:PM with the greeting of Sister Maria Helena Moreira, General Councilor for SC of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians.
The afternoon is conducted in two voices by Cecilia Costa, Professor of Sociology of Cultural Processes at the Faculty of Education of the Roma Tre University, and by the Rossana Virgili, Biblist: presentation and dialogue of the speakers with the assembly to examine what effects they have, in all the spaces and times of our existence, including those online, on being members of one another. It is a matter of continually reflecting on who we are on the net, discovering the other “as an integral part and condition of relationship and proximity”.
The day will end with the Good Night of Sister Maria del Carmen Canales, FMA Superior of Mary Mother of the Church Preprovince (RMC).
The morning of Saturday 27 April is instead dedicated to workshops where the relationship between community and communities from different pastoral and educational perspectives will be studied with a theoretical-practical methodology. In particular, “Community and communities on social networks”, managed by Tommaso Sardelli, how to network to build communities on the social networks; “A community for the social. From users to humans”, coordinated by Ermanno Giuca, on how can an online community can be built by involving people interested in one’s cause. Starting from the good practices of “Salesians for Social”, the workshop will help to learn how to communicate more effectively on the social media by building a network of (human) contacts interested in what you do.
“Facebook and pastoral animation” entrusted to Fr. Pierluigi La Notte, will explore how the contemporary educational challenge moves and continues in the media-sphere, and how the potential of Salesian educational action in digital courtyards requires coherence with one’s consecrated life. The FB page “MGSdonboscoalsud” (management, times, methods, costs) will especially analyze personal use and as an instrument of evangelization. “C3: Communty – Communities – Communication”, coordinated by Jaime Guisado and Fr. Silvio Zanchetta who will present the almost twenty-year experience of Donboscoland.it, a ‘middle ground’ where lived experiences, people, and evangelical values are the fundamental content of a micro ecosystem between the digital and the real, between community and communities. Finally, a workshop for Formators on the theme “The educational challenges of the Information Communication Technology Society for the formation of candidates to consecrated life” which Fr. Fabio Pasqualetti will present. The meeting concludes at 12.30PM with the intervention of Fr. Filiberto Gonzales, General Councilor for Social Communications for the Salesians of Don Bosco.
The two days of reflection are organized jointly by the Department for Social Communications of the Salesians of Don Bosco, by the Sector for Social Communications of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, by the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome, and by the Pontifical Faculty of Educational Sciences “Auxilium” of Rome.
To follow the live streaming of the Round Table: YouTube channel of the Faculty of Social Communication Sciences (https://www.youtube.com/user/videoFSC) from 4:PM to 5:30PM.
