By GARY DARMANIE Monday, May 25 2009

click on pic to zoom in

AFTER SURGERY: Archbishop Edward Gilbert celebrates mass at the St Theresa's RC Church, WoodBrook,yesterday. The mar from surgery is seen on the Archb...

In celebration of World Communications Day, Archbishop Edward Gilbert urged Catholics to spread the gospel to and through cyberspace.

Gilbert who returned to Trinidad over the weekend after having surgery in New York to remove cancerous tissue, made the call at the celebration of Mass at the St Theresa’s RC Church, Woodbrook, yesterday. As he called for Roman Catholics to use technology to spread the message of Jesus Christ and proclaim the gospel’s values, he said “the gospel has a right to be in cyberspace.”

Gilbert explained that the church needed to keep abreast with technology as the people of the church needed to keep adapting to the changing environment while maintaining their moral and spiritual values.

However he insisted that technology should not replace speaking with each other. “There are persons who may be texting others while they are not even talking to the person right next to them,” he said.

Gilbert said we needed to make sure we are talking with each other and that technology should be used to “deepen our relationships with each other and to deepen our relationship with God.”

Special prayers were offered at the end of the liturgy for media practitioners and other communication workers as Gilbert also called on the media to “serve the church and the country.”

Yesterday marked the 43rd celebration of World Communications Day, with a message from the Pope Benedict XVI for youths to “bring the witness of their faith to the digital World.”

In a Vatican release, the Pope asked Catholic youths to introduce into the culture of the new environment of communications and information technology the values on which they built their lives.