By Sebastián Sansón Ferrari
For the first time in its history, the Catholic Church will celebrate a Jubilee event within a Holy Year specifically dedicated to digital missionaries and Catholic influencers, formally recognising the digital environment as a true field of mission. The gathering will take place in Rome on Jul 28 – 29, 2025, coinciding with the opening days of the Youth Jubilee. Many young people who evangelise through social media will be actively involved in both celebrations.
This unprecedented initiative, organised by the Dicastery for Communication, will bring together nearly one thousand digital missionaries from around the world, with strong representation from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Spain. These evangelizers proclaim the joy of the Gospel through social media, video platforms, blogs, and apps, offering a creative, accessible, and engaged Christian witness within the digital continent.
For those unable to travel to the Eternal City, parallel virtual events will be offered through registration at the official website www.digitalismissio.org, allowing many others to participate from their local contexts of mission.
While in-person registration has closed, participants are still welcome to join online. The two main formative sessions of the Jubilee will also be livestreamed via the YouTube channel La Iglesia Te Escucha (“The Church Listens to You”).
This initiative emerged in response to Pope Francis’ call during the Synod on Synodality (2021–2024), which emphasised the importance of bringing the Good News into the digital world and ensuring no one is excluded from the synodal journey. It stands as a clear expression of a missionary Church, one that reaches out to the existential peripheries of contemporary society.
Spirituality, formation, celebration
The Jubilee program will unfold in three key phases. The spiritual component centres on the pilgrimage through the Holy Door—a hallmark of every Holy Year and a sign of interior renewal and openness to grace.
This will be followed by a formative phase, featuring keynote presentations, workshops, and testimonies at the Auditorium Conciliazione. These sessions aim to provide pastoral tools for digital mission and foster spaces for shared reflection.
The final phase will be a celebratory moment: a festival in Piazza Risorgimento highlighting art, music, and creativity as dynamic languages of evangelisation and communion in the digital sphere. Both venues are within walking distance of St Peter’s Square.
Compassionate evangelisation in the digital space
This Jubilee answers Pope Francis’ invitation to be “Good Samaritans” in the digital world. The Holy Father has urged the faithful to inhabit online spaces with compassion, humanity, and closeness, not merely through functional or technical presence, but through a pastoral approach of hope. He has repeatedly emphasised the need for a communication that listens, amplifies the voices of the voiceless, and disarms words marked by division or hostility—a theme also echoed by Pope Leo XIV in his first meeting with media professionals.
The Jubilee also builds upon the first global gathering of digital evangelizers, held during World Youth Day in Lisbon in 2023. That event gave rise to an international network of missionaries, which is now being strengthened and projected toward the future through this Jubilee initiative.
In the coming days, the Jubilee’s official website will release a dedicated spiritual guide to help participants prepare internally for the event. Promotional materials and graphic resources are already available for download to inspire and support the missionary dimension of participants, whether in Rome or in the digital peripheries.
A hymn that unites voices and cultures
One of the highlights of the Jubilee’s preparation has been the release of its official hymn, Todos (“Everyone”). The song is a collaborative project uniting Catholic artists from around the globe.
The title Todos echoes Pope Francis’ powerful affirmation during World Youth Day in Lisbon on Aug 3, 2023: “In the Church, there is room for everyone, everyone, everyone!” The hymn captures the inclusive, synodal, and missionary spirit that animates this Jubilee. – Vatican News
