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Thousands of digital missionaries across the Catholic world are opening up a new chapter in the Church history of evangelization, not simply generating content, but creating an encounter of hearts.

At the synod assembly in Rome two years ago, a Nicaraguan sister based in Palma de Mallorca in Spain with hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok ,Instagram, and X stood up to address bishops and cardinals from across the world. Most had no idea that the Church had legions of 渄igital missionaries潝priests, religious, and lay people攅xercising an apostolate in a place where people now spend much of their lives. Most of them didn檛 think of the web as a place, but an instrument. But when Xiskya Valladares spoke of the impact of the encounters she had had over the previous 10 years and the journeys of faith she had accompanied through her social media accounts, the penny dropped. One after another, bishops stood up to say that they now saw the internet in a new way.

Recalling that moment on July 28, 2025, in Rome at the first-ever Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, @xiskya recalled how after her intervention she handed Pope Francis 10 pages of testimonies from her missionary encounters, which Francis read carefully, then told her: 淵ou must carry on.� The idea of a digital mission had landed, as Mgr. Lucio Ruiz, secretary of the Vatican communications dicastery and organizer of the two-day jubilee, had dreamed it would.

It was while organizing a large-scale online listening exercise at the start of the Synod consultation, back in 2021, that Ruiz攁n Argentinian priest who has been in the Vatican since the early 1990s攕aw how large numbers of Catholics, quite independently of each other, and usually without any formal ties to Church evangelizing initiatives, had for the last few years been exercising this apostolate in the fast-expanding world of TikTok reels, Instagram pictures, and YouTube videos. The tech-savvy Ruiz, who naturally identifies with the influencers, saw their love of the faith and the Church and the impact they were having, especially on young people. His vision is of the Church catching up with the missionaries and hugging them close in the time-honored way by offering听support, blessing, and guidance攏ot to control them (which would be impossible and self-defeating) but to create a distinct apostolate.

The Synod October 2023 synthesis report dedicated an entire section (n.17) to what it called 淢ission in the digital environment,� recognizing that this was a new frontier for evangelizing, a 渃ontinent� that had its own culture (for good and ill) in which the Church was called to be present. 淚t is up to us to reach today culture in all spaces where people seek meaning and love, including the spaces they enter through their cellphones and tablets,� the Synod report noted, going onto call for 渙pportunities for recognizing, forming and accompanying those already working as digital missionaries, while also facilitating networking amongst them.�

Listening to the testimonies of the missionaries and influencers, a key theme emerged: the way in which they are present online matters in many ways more than the content itself. To put it theologically, the digital mission is fides qua攖he personal act of faith, the impact of believing攎ore than fides quae, that is, the objective content, the doctrines. The key to every mission, Ruiz told the gathering, is the offering of God mercy, to offer hope and healing, to walk with people who suffer. Pope Francis stressed in an early message for World Communications Day that 淐hristian witness is not made by bombarding people with religious messages, but by the willingness to give oneself to others through a willingness to engage patiently and respectfully in their questions and doubts, in the search for truth and the meaning of human existence.� The great value of the digital mission is in this accompaniment, the 減rimary proclamation,� testifying to the joy of the revelation of God mercy, which Mary models in the Magnificat. (Mary canticle in the first chapter of Luke shows, Ruiz laughingly told us, that 渟he knew she would have many followers.�)

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Ruiz had a clear message: that the digital mission is a new chapter in the Church history of mission, and it matters to the Church. The flip side of this was the need for the influencers to be aware of this, too, that people need to see the Church behind them in the way they act and speak online. 淎sk not: How many people follow me? But: How many brothers and sisters have I learned to love?� as Fr. Antonio Spadaro, S.J., undersecretary in the Dicastery for Culture and Education, put it, adding: 淗ow many stories have I listened to? How many wounds have I caressed with a word?� Spadaro went on to offer criteria for discerning before posting. 淲hen you create content, ask yourself: Does this come from fire, or the fear of not being seen? Is this post a gesture of love, or a way to boost my profile?� There was advice on discernment, too, from Cardinal 淐hito� Tagle, pro-prefect for the evangelization dicastery, at Mass the next morning in St Peter Basilica. God, he said in his homily, was the 済reat influencer�; we are asked to allow God love to influence us so that we might influence others.

At the end of the Mass that day, Pope Leo appeared, walking around the basilica to greet young people assembling for their jubilee. He said the Church mission to announce peace was one that was now entrusted to those 渨ho are here to renew your commitment to nourish Christian hope in social networks and online spaces.� It was 渘ot simply a matter of generating content, but of creating an encounter of hearts,� he observed, urging the missionaries to 渟eek out those who suffer, those who need to know the Lord, so that they may heal their wounds, get back on their feet and find meaning in their lives.� Observing that the Church, when faced with cultural change, had never remained passive but 渟ought to illuminate every age with the light and hope of Christ by discerning good from evil and what was good from what needed to be changed, transformed and purified, 漢e urged them to 渉umanize� the culture of the internet, especially at this time when 渢he widespread adoption of artificial intelligence will mark a new era in the lives of individuals and society as a whole.�

The Jubilee modeled in its two days the elements that bishops� conferences and dioceses will need to adopt to embrace the digital mission. First, they need to gather those already doing it, inviting them to be part of a network that connects them to a diocese or the Church nationally, organizing in-person gatherings. Second,听they need to provide opportunities for prayer and spiritual formation so that the missionaries deepen their awareness of themselves as promoters not of themselves but of God mercy, to develop behavior that reflects that awareness, as well as a consciousness of the antihuman forces that drive social media: reducing people to algorithms, the cult of technical perfection, and the lure of popularity for its own sake. Third, they need to deepen the communion of the digital missionaries, who often work in isolation from the Church and from each other. That means giving a chance to meet, and celebrate, and deepen the bonds of unity.

The digital mission is young in every sense. Its idiom is sharp, succinct, joyful. At its best, it is creative, dynamic, and energetic. It feels like the future, the way of connecting our aging, shrinking congregations with a generation that has grown up outside them. For a Church learning to be synodal攈umble, horizontal, missionary攖he digital mission challenges it 渢o reconsider its understanding 榩lace� as the real and actual setting in which we come to experience our humanity, without denying that there is a geographical and cultural dimension to this as well,� as the Synod Final Document puts it, adding: 淗ere, where the web of relationships is established, the Church is called to express its sacramentality (cf. Lumen Gentium 1) and to carry out its mission.� Or, as two young influencers put it in a 20-second TikTok recorded by Xiskya in the Vatican gardens, the digital mission is about learning that 渢he greatest influence we can have in the world comes from the heart, from our encounter with God.�