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The Call to Holiness in the Life of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, Jubilee for Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, July 28, 2025
Monsignor Roger J. Landry
Panel on “Saints: Influencers of God”
Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers
Auditorium Conciliazione, Vatican City State
July 28, 2025
To watch the video of the presentation within the context of the panel, please click below:
To listen to an audio recording of today’s words, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.28.25_Call_To_Holiness_in_the_Life_of_Digital_Missionaries_1.mp3
The following text guided the remarks:
Dear Fellow Digital Missionaries,
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger often emphasized that the two most effective arguments for the Catholic faith are the lives of the saints and the art the Church has produced in her womb.
As we focus during this Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers on saints as the true “influencers of God,” it’s important to keep the future Pope Benedict XVI’s pivotal insight in mind.
He was the most renowned theologian to sit on the chair of Peter since at least St. Leo the Great, 15 centuries prior. Yet he said that the most important thing to be effective missionaries in any medium is not the truth itself, especially understood in the abstract. He said it was the goodness of saints as they put the truth into practice and the beautiful art that reveals the splendor of the truth to human eyes and ears.
I have the great joy and honor to be, as National Director of The Pontifical Missions Societies in the United States, the successor of the Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who was National Director for 16 years. Archbishop Sheen proclaimed the faith powerfully to multitudes by his soaring preaching and best-selling books. But he also was one of the Church’s greatest pioneers in proclaiming the Catholic faith through two different forms of what was then new media: radio and television. What made Archbishop Sheen so effective was not just his philosophical logic and theological depth. It was the way he eloquently communicated the beauty of the truth and radiated with integrity an ardent and holy love for God, for others and for the truth that set them free.
His life reveals that the real influencers of God, the ones who become the most effective and long-lasting missionaries of their time, are not necessarily the smartest, wittiest or most mellifluous. They are those whose words, actions and lives reveal God-in-a-man or God-in-a-woman, young or old.
Technical excellence of course helps. Intelligence, humor, creativity, good looks, a way with words, and a sonorous voice obviously don’t hurt. But to paraphrase St. Paul’s words to the first Christians in Corinth, God does not necessarily call as digital missionaries those who by human standards are the wisest, most powerful and most nobly born, but those who by worldly criteria may seem comparatively foolish, weak, and lowly (1 Cor 1:26-29). These are the holy ones who recognize that their wisdom and strength come from God, that their rebirth in baptism makes them a son or daughter of the King of Kings, and who therefore seek to live with the dignity befitting that nobility.
As we’re about to hear, soon-to-be-Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati lived this way. In his prayer, vivacity, deep friendships, humility and loving care for the poor, he influenced so many of his contemporaries in Turin, and across the world since, to recognize the Lord living in him.
The future Saint Carlo Acutis lived this way. Through his dealings with his family members, classmates, doormen, and the poor, and in his interactions with others throughout the then-burgeoning world wide web, he radiated such Eucharistic charity that people were led “non io ma Dio,” not to him but to God.
Chiara Corbella Petrillo lived this way. As a joyful daughter, wife, mom, sister and friend, she diffused such a trust in God after the diagnosis and death of her first two children soon after birth and after the diagnosis of cancer during and after her third pregnancy that people grasped in her that they were encountering the sacred, as she entered more deeply into the mystery of redemptive suffering and the culmination of Christian love.
Sister Claire Crockett lived this way. In an age of celebrity, she left the stage and screen to show everyone that the greatest drama of all is the theo-drama in which Christ is the central protagonist knocking on our door, encouraging children and us to open, and take up fully our part, on the stage that matters most.
Later this week, we will celebrate the Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola. The pivotal moment in his life occurred when, after reading a book of the Lives of the Saints, he asked why he couldn’t do what Francis of Assisi or Dominic of Guzman had done. He indeed could. And with God’s grace he did.
It’s important for us to ask ourselves a similar question: Why can’t we do what Pier Giorgio, Carlo, Chiara and Sr. Clare did? Why can’t we do what Paul of Tarsus, Francis Xavier, Therese of Lisieux and Frances Cabrini did? If they had access to our state-of-the-art websites, Youtube platforms, Instagram and X accounts, and podcast software, how would they use them for the Gospel? What would they post and emphasize? How excited would they be that, because of these technological advances, they could now, at one and same time, basically preach the Gospel to all nations — including the 1,124 missionary dioceses and territories across the globe? How would they blend holiness of life with beauty and technical excellence to influence others on behalf of God? And why can’t we, with God’s help, do what they might do if they were alive today?
As we give God thanks for our vocation to be his disciples and apostles in the digital age, we ask God to give us a ravenous hunger and thirst for holiness as well as the virtues required to become the Michelangelos and Palestrinas, the Fra Angelicos and Hildegard von Bingens, of the digital arena, so that we, through goodness and beauty, can persuade our contemporaries of the truth with a capital-T.
And we ask the Lord to send upon us anew the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire, to ignite our voices, minds, hearts, fingers, indeed our whole being, so that through us and our work in the digital mission fields, he may renew the face of the earth and light the world ablaze with the hope and joy that come from him.
May God bless you all and make abundantly fruitful — and influential! — your important work for his kingdom!
The post The Call to Holiness in the Life of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, Jubilee for Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, July 28, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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By Father Roger Landry
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Monsignor Roger J. Landry
Panel on “Saints: Influencers of God”
Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers
Auditorium Conciliazione, Vatican City State
July 28, 2025
To watch the video of the presentation within the context of the panel, please click below:
To listen to an audio recording of today’s words, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.28.25_Call_To_Holiness_in_the_Life_of_Digital_Missionaries_1.mp3
The following text guided the remarks:
Dear Fellow Digital Missionaries,
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger often emphasized that the two most effective arguments for the Catholic faith are the lives of the saints and the art the Church has produced in her womb.
As we focus during this Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers on saints as the true “influencers of God,” it’s important to keep the future Pope Benedict XVI’s pivotal insight in mind.
He was the most renowned theologian to sit on the chair of Peter since at least St. Leo the Great, 15 centuries prior. Yet he said that the most important thing to be effective missionaries in any medium is not the truth itself, especially understood in the abstract. He said it was the goodness of saints as they put the truth into practice and the beautiful art that reveals the splendor of the truth to human eyes and ears.
I have the great joy and honor to be, as National Director of The Pontifical Missions Societies in the United States, the successor of the Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who was National Director for 16 years. Archbishop Sheen proclaimed the faith powerfully to multitudes by his soaring preaching and best-selling books. But he also was one of the Church’s greatest pioneers in proclaiming the Catholic faith through two different forms of what was then new media: radio and television. What made Archbishop Sheen so effective was not just his philosophical logic and theological depth. It was the way he eloquently communicated the beauty of the truth and radiated with integrity an ardent and holy love for God, for others and for the truth that set them free.
His life reveals that the real influencers of God, the ones who become the most effective and long-lasting missionaries of their time, are not necessarily the smartest, wittiest or most mellifluous. They are those whose words, actions and lives reveal God-in-a-man or God-in-a-woman, young or old.
Technical excellence of course helps. Intelligence, humor, creativity, good looks, a way with words, and a sonorous voice obviously don’t hurt. But to paraphrase St. Paul’s words to the first Christians in Corinth, God does not necessarily call as digital missionaries those who by human standards are the wisest, most powerful and most nobly born, but those who by worldly criteria may seem comparatively foolish, weak, and lowly (1 Cor 1:26-29). These are the holy ones who recognize that their wisdom and strength come from God, that their rebirth in baptism makes them a son or daughter of the King of Kings, and who therefore seek to live with the dignity befitting that nobility.
As we’re about to hear, soon-to-be-Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati lived this way. In his prayer, vivacity, deep friendships, humility and loving care for the poor, he influenced so many of his contemporaries in Turin, and across the world since, to recognize the Lord living in him.
The future Saint Carlo Acutis lived this way. Through his dealings with his family members, classmates, doormen, and the poor, and in his interactions with others throughout the then-burgeoning world wide web, he radiated such Eucharistic charity that people were led “non io ma Dio,” not to him but to God.
Chiara Corbella Petrillo lived this way. As a joyful daughter, wife, mom, sister and friend, she diffused such a trust in God after the diagnosis and death of her first two children soon after birth and after the diagnosis of cancer during and after her third pregnancy that people grasped in her that they were encountering the sacred, as she entered more deeply into the mystery of redemptive suffering and the culmination of Christian love.
Sister Claire Crockett lived this way. In an age of celebrity, she left the stage and screen to show everyone that the greatest drama of all is the theo-drama in which Christ is the central protagonist knocking on our door, encouraging children and us to open, and take up fully our part, on the stage that matters most.
Later this week, we will celebrate the Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola. The pivotal moment in his life occurred when, after reading a book of the Lives of the Saints, he asked why he couldn’t do what Francis of Assisi or Dominic of Guzman had done. He indeed could. And with God’s grace he did.
It’s important for us to ask ourselves a similar question: Why can’t we do what Pier Giorgio, Carlo, Chiara and Sr. Clare did? Why can’t we do what Paul of Tarsus, Francis Xavier, Therese of Lisieux and Frances Cabrini did? If they had access to our state-of-the-art websites, Youtube platforms, Instagram and X accounts, and podcast software, how would they use them for the Gospel? What would they post and emphasize? How excited would they be that, because of these technological advances, they could now, at one and same time, basically preach the Gospel to all nations — including the 1,124 missionary dioceses and territories across the globe? How would they blend holiness of life with beauty and technical excellence to influence others on behalf of God? And why can’t we, with God’s help, do what they might do if they were alive today?
As we give God thanks for our vocation to be his disciples and apostles in the digital age, we ask God to give us a ravenous hunger and thirst for holiness as well as the virtues required to become the Michelangelos and Palestrinas, the Fra Angelicos and Hildegard von Bingens, of the digital arena, so that we, through goodness and beauty, can persuade our contemporaries of the truth with a capital-T.
And we ask the Lord to send upon us anew the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire, to ignite our voices, minds, hearts, fingers, indeed our whole being, so that through us and our work in the digital mission fields, he may renew the face of the earth and light the world ablaze with the hope and joy that come from him.
May God bless you all and make abundantly fruitful — and influential! — your important work for his kingdom!
The post The Call to Holiness in the Life of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, Jubilee for Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, July 28, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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