Challenges of the new Pope to communicate in the digital era

Alberto Chinchilla, an expert Spanish in the digital world, analyzes the keys of Pope Francis’s communicative style and how his pontificate laid the foundations that will mark the challenges of the next Pope in the digital age.

In conversation with ACI Press, the co -founder and director of the consultant be sharedspecialized in digital communication, branding and personal brand, refers to Francisco as a “communicator pope” that “generated an abysmal change.”

Pope Francis’s disruptive style

“He had an innate character in communication, with great skills. He was able to project his simplicity, closeness, humanism, and authenticity on the network. It was a communication based on values, very from the heart,” he says.

It highlights in particular the presence of Pope Francis on social networks, with “human and generic messages that generated empathy in all types of public, only for Catholics.” He even claims to have met non -believer people who became after watching a video of the Pope.

Chinchilla, who led a successful campaign with the archbishopric of Barcelona (Spain) during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, and promoted an initiative for La Paz during the 2014 World Cup – resulted by the Vatican -, stressed that Francisco “always went one step ahead, with a very disruptive style.”

He warns at the same time that “communicating 24 days of the week, every day of the year, has its positive part and a less sweet part, since there are times when you face reputational risks, and that must be aware.”

The communication expert, who worked with CNA and ACI Press – agencies of Ewtn News – in Rome, recalls that Francisco also “communicated from silence, with gestures.”

He points out that even the messages published in his Official X accountthat most of the occasions are managed from the Secretary of State, “Pope Francis had to validate them first.”

“He wanted to see what messages they published. He wanted and also felt very comfortable with the networks. So if he could, he would have tweeted, sure. He already did it through the videos he sent by WhatsApp to his friends. That was his communication, innate, something that was also seen in how comfortable he was with the journalists,” he said. “

The challenges of communication of the new Pope

For Alberto Chinchilla, one of the challenges of the new Pope will be “to continue with the legacy of Pope Francis in communication, and continue with that coherent, very active discourse, very close and based on the values ​​of humanity.”

He emphasizes that “it is essential that the church leader in the world has those minimal knowledge of communication”, reiterating that “the fundamental challenge is to evangelize the world that has to live.”

“The Church is an millenary institution that communicates in a very rigid, very leisurely, and very strategic way. But the people do not only want strategy. The people want a clear message, a flat language, which a child understands it and also an older man, because if not, in the end he stays between the walls of the Vatican and between the columns of the Plaza de San Pedro.”

In this context, it highlights the importance that the message of the Catholic Church “reaches every corner of the world.” To do this, he insists that “the leader”, in this case the Pope, “be a great communicator.”

He also points out that communication “is something that is in our lives, everyday.

To do this, he adds, there must be “a team that really works in a strategy to carry the message and the new narrative” to the world.

“We have seen the Pope accept all kinds of interviews, talk about abortion, sex, euthanasia with kids of different ideologies, not only with Catholics, also with non -believers. The new Pope has to be there.”

«Un Daddy a Tik Tok?

Chinchilla recalls that years ago “I listened to laughs” when he said that the Pope had to be on Instagram, for example.

“The simple fact of having less institutional communication, a communication in which you see the Pope in social networks, helps a lot because that is where the faithful are, and even people who are already very remote who can reach the message.”

In this way, he reveals that he “loved to see the successor of Pope Francis in Tik Tok”, since he would generate a “very positive response to the Catholic Church.”

For Chinchilla, “Catholics have an abysmal force,” however he regrets that “we live fully accommodated.” “There are infinite stories of the people who form the Church and many times we do not realize that they can truly attract the attention of those who do not believe.”

The risk of bulos and the lack of credibility on the Internet

Regarding bulos on the Internet and fake newshe regretted that the problem is that “we do not educate users how they have to act.”

“When we do not explain that they have to go to the official sources and explain what are the true official sources, an irresponsible use of those channels of social networks is generated and that is where the buns and rumors begin to increase.”

In this sense, he encouraged the media to carry out an exercise in the dissemination of Catholic information, generating a pedagogy “of how social networks have to be used, because people do not know, and more at this time when artificial intelligence passes us over and at a time as transcendental as death, a concalave and the choice of the new Pope”.

This lack of credibility, he reveals, is something “that has always worried me”, because there is “an in -depth knowledge of how to make good use of social networks.”