Belfast school students launch internet prayerclub

Some of the boys on a pilgrimage to Rome give a gift to a young deacon
seminarian at the Irish College.

Students at De La Salle College, Belfast, have launched an internet prayerclub: De La Salle College Prayer Club Belfast! I happen to know that they (or at least some of them) are from Year 9 as they regularly check my blog and sometimes leave comments too. Their teacher (I'm not sure if she would like to be named) found my and, since then, even though we have never met, we keep in regular touch, corresponding on matters to do with faith and education. She takes the boys on pilgrimages to Rome, ensures they meet priests and seminarians capable of inspiring them to an authentic Catholic life and, God willing, a response to a calling to be priests themselves, etc. In his 2010 message for World Communications Day, Pope Benedict spoke about the importance of using the modern media, including the internet, as a means of evangelisation:

Responding adequately to this challenge amid today’s cultural shifts, to which young people are especially sensitive, necessarily involves using new communications technologies. The world of digital communication, with its almost limitless expressive capacity, makes us appreciate all the more Saint Paul’s exclamation: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor 9:16) The increased availability of the new technologies demands greater responsibility on the part of those called to proclaim the Word, but it also requires them to become become more focused, efficient and compelling in their efforts. Priests stand at the threshold of a new era: as new technologies create deeper forms of relationship across greater distances, they are called to respond pastorally by putting the media ever more effectively at the service of the Word.

Among these young men might be some future priests who will harness the rich possibilities that modern communications techonology offers for evangelisation.