María Valentina Leal, a young Colombian Catholic, formation political scientist and vocation, has become one of the most inspiring voices of digital evangelization in Latin America. Through your profile on Instagram The door to the sidehe has been helping thousands of people to rediscover the beauty of the Catholic faith for years, especially through the daily study of the Word of God.
But his faith history begins long before opening a YouTube channel or directing live Bible studies. It starts, as she says, “from my mother’s belly.”
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“Since my parents conceived me, they conceived me in prayer. And while I was in my belly, they talked to me telling me what the catechism says: ‘We have come to know God.’ They repeated that constantly. They put me Valentina because they wanted it to be a brave girl, who was never afraid to speak of the Lord.”
A fracture moment and a new installment to God
María Valentina’s life was transformed when, at age 15, she suffered a health problem that stopped the frantic rhythm with which she was leading her life. “It was as if God needed my physical stillness to cause an inner stillness in which I could talk to me: ‘You have lived a faith in a beautiful family, but I need your personal yes. You have received a lot and I need you to start delivering.”
That moment of fracture became a point of spiritual inflection. “We had very strong existential crises. I said: ‘If I die today, I did nothing.’ Then the Lord used my pain to take my personal yes.”
At 17 he entered the community Fray Nelson Medina’s spiritual familyand, along with some friends also Catholics, they devised to start an evangelizing initiative: “We always complained about what we saw on social networks, but they were only complaints. And we said: complaints do not solve anything. The world does not change with my complaint, it changes doing something.”
Thus was born the channel of YouTube The door next door. But the real inspiration came when Pope Francis published Gaudete et exsultate in 2018. In the chapters of 6-9, the Argentine pontiff spoke of the saints of the door next door. “That name seemed very striking, we resumed it, and thus the project was reborn,” he says in conversation with ACI Press.
Evangelize from everyday life
Student of Political Science at a Lay University, María Valentina says that her training was complemented by studies in Bible Sciences University, where she was touched by the preaching of Fidel Oñoro, a Colombian eudist priest, specialized in biblical and very active theology in pastoral formation: “I had all my life listening to the word of God, but this priest managed to play my heart and really falling in love with my heart.”
Hoy, The door to the side It has become a family apostolate. “My parents do the rosary at 5 in the morning, my brothers pray laudes, and I every morning at 8 I do live studies live on Instagram and YouTube, purifying the reading of the day, explaining their context and meaning.”
Its objective is clear: that Catholics fall in love with the word. “I always say: Protestants say alone scripture, but we sometimes seem zero scripture. And it cannot be. The word of God has to be daily bread for us.”
Real impact for all who want to approach
María Valentina tells emotion that biblical studies not only summon faithful Catholics. “A Muslim girl connected daily and told me: ‘It is not what you do, it is that the word of God touches me.” And he became Catholicism. “
Protestants are also connected, who value their faithfulness to the Catholic doctrine: “I always present myself as a truth cooperator, as the motto of St. John Paul II says. The important thing is that it is the Word of God who touches hearts, not my words.”
Today it has one hundred followers who do not miss their live appointments to talk about the Bible. “I am moved to see that there are convinced Catholics who have now put a schedule to the Word of God. That transforms lives,” he says.
Presence and mission in the jubilee of young people
María Valentina was one of the young influencers who participated in the jubilee of digital missionaries. An appointment was special that confirmed the fertile terrain offered by digital platforms in evangelization. Through the streets of Rome, he found others who “also tell the Lord every day. I have a lot of desire to see them, to put them face, to see the face for which God gives life.”
Seven years have passed since the launch of the door to the side and the project has become much more than a social media account. This year, María Valentina organizes the face -to -face Congress of Bible, on Saturday, September 6 in Bogotá, along with Fray Nelson Medina. “We want to give tools to read, pray and study the Word of God. That does not stay in networks, that reaches the heart, to life.”
His testimony is proof that the Gospel can even transform the most unexpected spaces, and that the networks, well used, can be a true “door to the side” towards holiness.
Victoria Cardiel
Victoria Cardiel is a journalist specialized in social and religious information issues. Since 2013, he has covered all the news of the Vatican for various media, such as the Spanish news agency Europa Press, or the weekly of the Archdiocese of Madrid, Alfa and Omega.