Dear Brothers, we publish the letter with which Fr. Farì welcomes his new appointment as Director of the Office of the Congregation of the Mission!

To Visitors, Vice Visitors, Regional Superiors
To Communication Officers

Dear Confreres

I express my gratitude to the Superior General, Fr Tomaž, and to his Council, for having entrusted me with the direction of the Office of Communication of the Congregation of the Mission in place of Fr Hugo M. Vera, whom I greet fraternally.

“Paul, after preaching in numerous places, arrived in Athens and went to the Areopagus, where he proclaimed the Gospel, using language that was suitable and understandable in that environment (Acts 17:22). The areopagus then represented the center of the culture of the learned Athenian people, and today it can be taken as a symbol of the new environments in which the Gospel is to be proclaimed. The first areopagus of modern times is the world of communications, which is unifying humanity, making it – as they say – “a global village”. (Redemptoris Missio, 37).

We, too, members of the Congregation for Mission, like all consecrated men and women “are challenged in a new way by the need to witness to the Gospel through the means of social communication” (Vita consecrata, 99).

We, too, want to inhabit the “digital streets” together, ensuring that “connections” are transformed into “relationships”, “individual influencers” into “weavers of communion”; thus, communication will no longer be a mere transmission of news, but a path of sharing stories and experiences of beauty or suffering, of prayer and the search for good and for initiatives in favor of the poor and marginalized.

This wants to be precisely the pastoral mission of the Office of Communication: to form, to inform (ad intra and ad extra), to share, to proclaim the Word of God, to bear witness to our missionary commitment and to the beauty of the Vincentian charism and spirituality through words and images contextualized with theological content to support them.

As of now, I am asking those responsible for communication in the Provinces, Vice Provinces and Regions for fraternal, concrete and passionate collaboration, the modalities and “strategies” of which we will share on a digital platform: 26 June 2024 h. 15.30 (Rome) for the Provinces of the West on 27 June 2024 h. 9.30 a.m. (Rome) for the Eastern Provinces.

It will be our Superior General Fr Tomaž who will introduce our meetings.

I entrust my service to your prayers.
I embrace you all.
Fr. Salvatore Farì CM