Holy See launches daily programming on giant digital screens
The Dicastery for Communication partners with Selfiestreet to broadcast Vatican images and multimedia on giant digital screens in Rome and Milan. Starting 17 May, a daily schedule of images, videos, and special broadcasts will appear in high‑visibility public spaces. The initiative aims to widen the Holy See’s reach by using contemporary digital communication instead of traditional media. The project will gradually expand to additional screens in other Italian cities, following a similar campaign during the 2025 Christmas season.
4 months ago
The Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication is partnering with the Italian digital platform Selfiestreet to broadcast official Vatican images, videos and special messages on large public screens in Rome and Milan, beginning 17 May 2026. The daily schedule aims to extend the Holy See’s outreach beyond traditional media and will later add screens in other Italian cities, building on a 2025 Christmas‑season visual campaign that featured Pope Leo XIV’s images near Saint Peter’s Basilica. 1
The project will display a curated “daily programming” lineup of photos, short videos and live‑event feeds on prominent digital billboards.
It is managed by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication in collaboration with Selfiestreet, which operates the screen network.
The Vatican intends to roll out the service to additional Selfiestreet screens across other Italian cities in the coming months, further widening the audience for Holy See communications.
The new screens follow a successful visual outreach during the 2025 Christmas season, when selected images of Pope Leo XIV and festive messages were displayed on giant screens near Saint Peter’s Basilica.*
Does digital outreach fulfill the Holy See's evangelization mandate?
Digital outreach can fulfill an authentic part of the Church’s evangelization mission—because the Gospel is to be proclaimed to “every creature,” including through the ordinary ways Christ’s witnesses live and speak in the world—but it cannot replace the Church’s hierarchical ministry and the sacraments. In Catholic teaching, digital evangelization is a means (a practical instrument and environment), not the substance of the Church’s mission.
The Church has received Christ’s mandate to proclaim the saving truth to the ends of the earth. It “continues unceasingly to send heralds of the Gospel” and prepares people to “receive and profess the faith,” ultimately incorporating them in Christ through baptism.
This mandate is not optional or merely cultural; it belongs to the Church’s universal mission precisely because Christ sent the Apostles to make disciples of all nations.
Lumen Gentium teaches that Christ fulfills His prophetic office not only through the hierarchy, but also through the laity made His witnesses. This witness must shine through “their daily social and family life,” where they announce Christ “by a living testimony as well as by the spoken word.”
So, the Church’s evangelization is not confined to formal religious settings. The laity can cooperate in the “external spread and the dynamic growth of the Kingdom of Christ” even while they live their ordinary secular responsibilities.
If digital spaces form part of modern “daily social” and “ordinary surroundings,” then evangelization carried out there by credible witness (life + truthful speech) fits within the Church’s description of lay apostolate.
The Church’s mission includes proclamation that calls people toward faith and baptism. Since digital outreach can communicate teaching, testimony, moral appeal, and opportunities to seek the faith, it can function as the “spoken word” and “living testimony” component mentioned in Lumen Gentium.
The Holy Father also frames the digital world as a real pastoral and educational concern. Pastoral care “cannot limit itself to ‘using’ the media,” but must “educate and dwell the digital world in a human way,” so that the internet becomes a space of “freedom, responsibility and fraternity.”
That is a strong indicator that, for the Holy See, digital engagement is not merely promotional; it belongs to pastoral care and evangelizing work when it forms conscience, promotes truth, and supports human dignity.
Even when evangelization succeeds through proclamation, the Church teaches a real distinction in roles and realities:
So digital outreach can prepare and call, but it cannot substitute for ordained ministry and sacramental life, which are intrinsic to the Church’s constitution and salvation-mission.
Catholic teaching pushes beyond “presence online” toward truth, formation, and ethical responsibility:
The Pope emphasizes that Catholics “can and must contribute” to media, information, and AI literacy, including critical thinking and the habit of verifying sources.
This literacy helps people avoid errors and manipulation, and it supports privacy and protection from harmful misuse (e.g., fraud, cyberbullying, deepfakes).
In a message to AI-related leadership, the Holy See stresses that it is not merely “what AI can do,” but who we are becoming through technologies built to serve the Church’s mission; builders must practice moral discernment and develop systems reflecting justice, solidarity, and reverence for life.
The pastoral approach described above—educating and dwelling the digital world so it becomes truly humane—means digital outreach should aim at formation and community-building, not just one-way content distribution.
Yes—digital outreach can fulfill the evangelization mandate in a genuine way when it functions as the proclamation of Christ through living testimony and truthful speech, carried out in the ordinary conditions of modern life, and oriented toward faith and the Church’s sacramental reality.
But it does not replace the apostolic and sacramental work entrusted to bishops, priests, and the Church’s sacramental life; digital outreach is correctly understood as an enabling medium for evangelization, not a substitute for it.