VE Multimedios is a catholic association born in Latin America with international horizons, that participates actively in the evangelization mission of the Church using informatics. VE Multimedios is a division of «Vida y Espiritualidad» (Life and Spirituality) —VE—.
The slogan «Technology for the New Evangelization» expresses our adhesion to the mission of the Church. We are conscious that new technologies, as the Second Vatican Council explains, are means that “well used, give valuable services to the human family” in order to build “with effectiveness to recreate the spirits, and extend and consolidate the Kingdom of God”[1]
In our service we remember the words of John Paul II when he explained that, among all media, Internet «offers great opportunities for evangelization if it is used with competence and with a clear conscience of its strengths and weaknesses. Specially, when it supplies information and generates interest, makes possible an initial encounter with the Christian message, especially among the young, that goes towards the cyberspace as an open window to the world »[2].
In his last published document, John Paul II said that this means «not only supplies resources for a better information but also gets people used to a interactive communication. Many Christians are already using this new tool in a creative way, exploring the potentialities for evangelization, education, inner communication, management and government »[3].
Conscious of the big task that it has in order to cooperate with the mission of the Church, VE Multimedios has designed its service of evangelization taking into consideration three fundamental areas:
1. Software development (computer programs)
Designed in order to help with the pastoral work, study, research, catechesis, homilies and formation. Programs developed by VE Multimedios use advanced technology, in the hypertext and multimedia context, that allow the maximum profit of the informatics resources. Their designs make possible that users can handle them without any special training. They have been designed to be used by people that are not familiar with PCs.
Among these programs we have the “Catholic Church Catechism”, “Vatican Council II”, “John Paul II encyclical letters”, “General Conferences of Latin American Episcopates –Río, Medellín, Puebla y Santo Domingo–“, “Liturgical times images”, “Marian catechesis of John Paul II”, “Family documents”, “Renewal horizon of the Vatican Council”, “Gospel comments”, “Towards the V General Conference of the Latin American Bishops”, just to mention a few of them.
2. Promote the Church presence on Internet
We cooperate with Church institutions in America and Europe trough the development of sites that have content for evangelization and for promoting human culture. We have supplied different services related to Internet in more than 16 countries and in six different languages. VE Multimedios participates actively in the development of web sites of institutions that have requested them. Among the institutions that required our services we can mention the Pontifical Council of Health Pastoral Care, the Pontifical Council for Laity, CELAM (Latin American Bishops Council), Episcopal Conferences of Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama and Peru.
Within this service to the Church, VE Multimedios manages and develops the Christian Electronic Library—BEC— (www.multimedios.org) that is a source for consulting about the faith of the Church, and recognized all over the world since it is the greatest catholic online encyclopedia until now. We have articles about the Church Teachings, Fathers of the Church, Holy Scriptures, Family, History, Philosophy, Theology, Technology, Evangelization, Latin America, and many more. With the BEC, VE Multimedios cooperates to accomplish the task of making Christ present trough the media.
We also have the CIRILUS.NET project for evangelization. This system of distance education trough the Internet was created in order to help with the Church in the task of Christian education. Cirilus is a wide and very successful project that intends to reach every single person that has Internet access. The project takes advantage, with educative goals, of many tools that web users have: forums, chats, polls, surveys, messages, e-mail, etc.
Another project that VE Multimedios develops is an on-line trade service in which we offer a great deal of items of religious art, books, videos, catholic software, liturgical pieces, etc. 10ideas.com uses all the means that e-commerce offers to trade all over the world products that can be used for evangelization. This is the first catholic virtual store in Spanish.
There is also IGLESIA.INFO, a great catholic directory that has a lot of sites with brief descriptions that allow the users to search quickly for the information they need. This is a free service that grows and is updated permanently. The idea is to become into a space that allows the world to know the great amount of catholic information that is on the Internet.
TRIMILENIO is a big project that VE Multimedios manages together with the Episcopal Conferences in Latin America and the Caribbean trough the Informatics Net of the Church in Latin America (RIIAL) and with the collaboration of the Pontifical Council of Social Communications. It offers free web services for Church institutions that have economic difficulties and that work in evangelization, specially in Latin America and the Caribbean. Although it is open to Africa. In this way, archdioceses, dioceses, apostolic vicariates, congregations, societies of apostolic life, ecclesial movements, lay associations, especial projects and many more can have an excellent web site whose objective agrees with the Catholic Church teachings.
3. A few thoughts about technology
We constantly reflect about the consequences that new technology has for Christian life. With our work we encourage the proper use of digital means by using the many advantages that these offer as well as a critical view of the many aspects, challenges and ambiguities that emerge.
At VE Multimedios we analyze the many ideas that circulate around the Internet and the impact they have, so that we can develop our own services in order to give an answer from the faith perspective to the cultural challenges that these present for our times. Among the fruits of this reflection, we have prepare the Web Strategies course, designed with ideas taken from catholic experiences in the net that seeks for planning, building and growing of catholic projects in Internet. Besides, VE Multimedios educates the Church members with congresses, conferences, seminars, courses, update and formation workshops. These efforts to study new technologies allow us to create an Informatics Research Center for Social Development in New Evangelization, that will allow to concentrate our and some other institutions of the Church that work in this area.
With these projects, VE Multimedios decides to deepen, use and spread technology for the New Evangelization in order to respond to the urgency that man has to hear the Lord Jesus words. John Paul II words are very encouraging: «Only when His face is seen (of Christ), and his voice is heard, the world will know the Good News of our redemption. This is the goal of evangelization. And this is what will make Internet a authentically human space, since we don’t have a space for Christ, then we don’t have a space for man either»
At VE Multimedios we are committed to work hard in this beautiful task of New Evangelization, treasuring the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI that invites people working in the media to be in permanent formation, participation and dialogue. [4].
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[1] Second Vatican Council, Inter Mirifica, 2
[2] John Paul II, Internet: a new forum to proclaim the Gospel, 24/01/02
[3] John Paul II, The rapid development, 9
[4] Message of Benedict XVI in the World Day of Social Communications, 2006.
