At its first Catholic YouTubers Hangout meeting last month, dozens of Catholics from about 50 channels met online to discuss ways of bringing the Gospel to their YouTube channels.

Organiser Daniel Glaze said the idea for the Hangout came to him when he was watching a Catholic YouTube video and started wondering whether Catholics on YouTube knew each other or ever collaborated together.

Soon after finding others had similar questions the Catholic YouTubers Hangout had its first meeting. The free online conference was open to any Catholic YouTube channel.

These were defined as channels where the content explicitly talked about Catholicism and the Catholic church, or the creator of a channel is a Catholic who is letting their faith influence their work.

The Hangout goals are to create a community of Catholic YouTubers, and to encourage further collaboration within that community.

This community of Catholic YouTubers is necessary, Lewis said, because "Catholics need to get their voice in the hyper-progressive, strictly materialistic, and atheist and agnostic conversation happening on YouTube."

He said he has two aims: firstly he would like a "Catholic YouTube" of sorts - a corner within the platform dominated by explicitly Catholic conversations and creators, like there is on Twitter or Instagram.

Lewis says he also wants Catholics to be "part of every other corner of YouTube. We should be earning our rights to be heard in the conversations happening on ‘Gamer YouTube,' ‘Politics YouTube,' or ‘Movie-Nerd YouTube,'" he says.

"Having both of these [aims] is important to spreading the Gospel. The first is important for answering the explicit questions of people interested in the faith, the second is important for putting the Gospel in new places among the people of the world."

Source

• CNA
• Image: YouTube

The Holy See permanent observer at the UN office in Geneva, Archbishop Silvio Tomasi, said Europe needs to ask itself some hard questions.

"Europe should ask itself why it has failed to be able to teach these young people to organise their life in order to build something positive in Europe, instead of wasting their lives through violence and fighting," the archbishop said.

In recent months, the Islamic State has conducted an online campaign in the Western world.

This has led to the recruitment of many young Canadians, Europeans and Americans to fight for the terrorist group.

Archbishop Tomasi told the Catholic News Agency that the Europe has failed in "injecting a spiritual dimension to motivate young people who are seeking for an idea".

"As people grow up, they want to change things, they want to fight injustice, and some of these values are not provided, are not concretely realised, then the temptation to look for some other solution becomes very strong," he said.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis held his first Google Hangout - a live video conversation - across five continents with teenagers who belong to the international network of "Scholas occurentes", uniting students of all faiths and cultures.

After the "hangout", the Pope warned that the wisdom of "it takes a village to raise a child" is being lost.

Children are either overprotected by permissive parents or neglected, Pope Francis said.

"The educational partnership has been broken" as families, schools and society are "no longer united together for the child", he said on September 4.

People have to "rebuild this village in order to educate a child", he said.

All of society also needs to help children and young people who are homeless, exploited, victims of violence or without any prospects, the Pope added.

The Pope laid the blame on today's "culture of disposal" and "the cult of money" for creating and perpetuating adults' apathy to or complicity in the mistreatment of children.

This is why "it's very important to strengthen bonds: social, family and personal ties" with children and young adults, and create an environment that helps them approach the world with "trust and serenity".

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• Catholic News Service
• Image: 9News