Delegates Urged to Point People to Christ at Welcome Mass of First Asian Digital Missionary Assembly

Digital missionaries are called not simply to influence people online but to point people toward Christ, Fr. Felmar Fiel, SVD, said as the First Asian Catholic Digital Missionary Assembly opened in the Philippines.

Drawing on a distinctive Filipino way of giving directions, pointing with the lips  Fr. Fiel used the gesture as an image for the mission of digital communicators.

“As digital missionaries, we are also called to point with our posts,” he said during the Welcome Mass on September 10 at Three Saints Chapel on the Radio Veritas Asia (RVA) grounds in Quezon City.

Themed “Influencers to Witnesses: Synodal Way for Digital Mission in Asia,” the assembly brings together more than 100 Catholic digital communicators and influencers from across Asia.

Fr. Fiel, RVA general manager, presided over the Mass and concelebrated with Fr. John Mi Shen, RVA program director and executive secretary of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) Office of Social Communication, and Fr. Cyril Victor Joseph, executive secretary of the Office of Social Communication of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India.

In his homily, Fr. Fiel drew on the recent FABC plenary assembly in Jakarta, where the images of “bridge” and “bridge builders” emerged as important expressions of the Church’s mission in Asia.

Asia is marked by differences in language, culture, history, political realities, religious traditions and experiences of being Church, he noted. Yet these differences do not prevent people from coming together as one community in Christ.

“We belong to Christ. We belong to one another. We belong to one humanity,” Fr. Fiel said, connecting this reality with the vocation of digital missionaries.

For him, digital platforms can become bridges into places where the Church may not be physically present. A social media post, livestream or digital story can become a point of encounter between people and the Gospel.

“Perhaps your post will be the bridge through which someone encounters Christ,” he said.

Fr. Fiel also reflected on the readings from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, which address practical challenges faced by the early Christian community, including questions of morality, relationships, culture, religious practices, food and mission.

Despite their differences and disagreements, St. Paul repeatedly brought the community back to its fundamental identity: belonging to Christ and to one another.

The same principle, Fr. Fiel said, is needed in today’s digital mission. Digital communicators must ensure that their work is guided not merely by knowledge or the desire to attract attention, but by love and a deeper sense of Christian belonging.

He concluded by returning to the Filipino gesture with which he began.

The question for digital missionaries, he said, is where their posts are pointing to their followers, subscribers and even those who quietly observe their content.

“If we point only to ourselves, we remain influencers,” Fr. Fiel said. “But if our lives, our stories, our creativity and digital platforms point people toward Jesus, then we become witnesses.”

The opening liturgy brought together participants from different Asian countries, with delegates wearing their respective national attire, adding a visible expression of the cultural diversity represented at the assembly.

Welcoming the participants, Fr. Mi Shen said the FABC Office of Social Communication and RVA were pleased to host the gathering and invited the delegates to reflect on their vocation as digital missionaries. He recalled that Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul I and Mother Teresa had visited the RVA campus and, in their own ways, influenced people through their lives and witness. Their example, he said, offers a challenge to today’s digital influencers: to move beyond influence and become authentic witnesses of the Gospel.

The First Asian Catholic Digital Missionary Assembly continues at RVA through September 13, focusing on the role of digital communicators in building a more synodal and missionary Church in Asia.