For the Church to fully realize its
mission of evangelization the new
technology and digital media holds
the ace. This was the consensus reached at
during the recently organized conference
for Catholic media practitioners in the
Archdiocese of Lagos held at St. Agnes
Catholic Church, Maryland, Ikeja, Lagos.
In his key note address, the Chief Shep-
herd of the Catholic Archdiocese of La-
gos and host of the conference, Most Rev.
(Dr.) Alfred Adewale Martins noted that
the Church more than ever before should
embrace the social media and the new
technology to reach out and deepen the
faith especially among the young minds
who statistics show spend more time on
their smart phones and other online plat-
forms than they do for the conventional
or traditional media. According to the
Archbishop and Metropolitan See of La-
gos, the Gospel and the social teachings
of the Catholic Church should leverage
on the digital media if it must fulfill the
mission of preaching the good news to
the ends of the earth.
His Grace’s submission was equally
echoed by the general assembly in the
communiqué released following the pa-
per presentations by Msgr. (Prof.) Joseph
Oladejo Faniran, Dean of Faculty of Arts
and Social Sciences, Catholic Institute of
West Africa, Port Harcourt, Rivers State
and Mr. Seyi Martins, General Manager,
Metro Fm, Radio Nigeria. Professor Fan-
iran paper entitled ‘Mobilizing Catholic
Media Practitioners for the Mission of the
Church in the Digital Era,’ also noted that
like the age of industrialization which
came about with the invention of writing
and the simple media of oral culture have
since been transformed to embrace com-
puterized electronic information pro-
cessing, digital technology and others. In
his summation, priests, the religious and
laity must acquire and have the necessary
skill and technical know-how for effective
evangelization.
In the same vain, Mr. Seyi Martins’
presentation entitled ‘Mobilizing Catho-
lic Media Practitioners for the Mission
of the Church in the Digital Era,’ harped
on the need for the clergy, the religious
and the laity to take advantage of the
social media platforms to spiritually and
morally enrich the people particularly
the youths who spend hours roaming
the different online platforms seeking
for knowledge and entertainment. In
his words ‘We are now in the digital era
where information can now be handled
in more ways than writing.’ Mr. Martins
added that close to 40 million Nigerians
own mobile phones, most of which are
smart phones and asked the Catholic me-
dia practitioners and those involved in
teaching and spreading the gospel to tap
on this and have everyone understand the
mission of the Church.
These and other related matters formed
the kernel of the final draft of the com-
muniqué issued at the end of brain
storming on the stand of the Church in
the digital era.
