AFRICA/SOUTH AFRICA - The Church in South Africa: forms and contents to communicate the Gospel

Friday, 23 November 2018

Imbisa

Benoni (Agenzia Fides) - The Inter-Regional Meeting of Bishops in Southern Africa (IMBISA) hosted a Media and Communications workshop at the Lumko Centre in Benoni, South Africa. The workshop gathered participants chosen from the nine member countries represented by IMBISA: Angola, Botswana, eSwatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, São Tomé e Príncipe, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The initiative seeks to develop and significantly improve the quality of communication for IMBISA in sub-Saharan Africa.
During the meeting the Archbishop of Cape Town, Mgr. Stephen Brislin, President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Southern Africa emphasized the importance of the mission they carry out and recalled that the Church relies on them for the spread the Good News.
Father Ricardo da Silva, South African Jesuit, engaged with the Jesuit Institute's Spotlight Africa, a new online portal on society, politics, religion and spirituality in South Africa, helped the participants to try their hand at content issues, especially regarding the written word. He taught them to report news and tell stories to reach a generation largely unaccustomed to reading. Among the participants present: lay people, men and women, priests and a bishop who were all involved in the respective dioceses in the field of social communications, without however having ever received professional training.
"A communication professional must always be ready to feel uncomfortable", is what was said during the workshop, which reflected on the use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The workshop reminded participants of the opportunities and risks that the various tools offer. (AP) (Agenzia Fides, 23/11/2018)


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