KENYA: “Meet the Youth Where they Are”, Archbishop Hubertus Advocates for Church Presence Online
Archbishop Hubertus Matheus Maria van Megen
Sr. Henriette Anne, FSSA
In an inclusive interview with Sr. Olga, a member of the Daughter’s of St. Paul, on Thursday 21st January 025, Archbishop Hubertus Matheus Maria Van Megan, Apostolic Nuncio to Kenya, shed light on the significant celebration of the Jubilee World of Communication, within the Jubilee encouraging the Church to engage actively in the digital space.
He urged the Church to embrace the Social Media as a way of reaching out to the younger generation.
“The Church must be present in the social media. The majority of youth is on Social Media; if you want to influence youth, if you want to have youth on your side, you need to be where they are, and they are on X. They are on Tiktok, they are on Facebook, that is where you meet youth, that’s is where we need to be as Church, as well we need to be in the market place and play the flutes so that people can dance”.
Drawing parallels to St. Paul’s missionary journey to Athens, Archbishop Matheus remarked “St. Paul, when he went to Athens, he went to meet people on the marketplace, and I think that is also true for the Church of today. If you want to meet people many times, you will not meet them in the Church, but you should go to the marketplace”.
Acknowledging the challenges that the Church is still facing in understanding and using media, he stressed that the Church has to understand better its role within the large world of social media describing it as world without limits, goes beyond our actual world.
The Jubilee world communication 2025 was celebrated from 24th – 26th January 2025, and was followed by a conference which the Dicastery for Communication organized for the Bishops responsible for Communication in the conferences and the National Communication Directors.
