Evangelising spirit continues with new website

By Catherine Sheehan

A new evangelising tool to help Catholics in their calling as missionary disciples was launched in the Archdiocese on 14 May.

An initiative of Archbishop Julian, the Evangelium website is a continuation of the highly successful Evangelium Project which ran over several months last year and engaged more than 200 parishioners around Tasmania.

Once a week, participants met in ‘hubs’ around the state, in parishes and homes, and were “linked up” via livestream to the Cathedral Centre in Hobart, where Archbishop Julian led prayer, reflections on Scripture and group discussion.

Continuing that missionary focus, the Evangelium website is intended to be a multimedia resource, including articles, podcasts and videos, for those seeking to enhance their knowledge and skills around evangelisation.

“We are essentially responding to a call from Pope Francis that the Church be more missionary and outward looking in its orientation,” Archbishop Julian said.

“In his apostolic letter on evangelisation, the Pope proposed the idea of missionary disciples and last year we ran the Evangelium Project to encourage Catholics to be more missionary oriented. That was well received.”

“We’re hoping this website will continue to provide new materials and be a place where people can find resources in relation to understanding and developing missionary discipleship.”

The website has resources relating to the study of Scripture, parish evangelisation, Catholic podcasts, books, music and apps.

“I’m hoping this will be a one-stop-shop,” Archbishop Julian said. “And we’re hoping to continue building up the available resources.”

Archbishop Julian said he hoped the website would play a role in bringing people back to the Catholic faith.

“We need to be a missionary Church. That doesn’t mean people going to a foreign country to be a missionary.”

“A missionary doesn’t have to be somebody who’s a priest or religious – the whole of the Church needs to be missionary.

“Lay people need to develop an orientation towards mission. Perhaps for many Catholics, it’s something they haven’t considered seriously, so we’re trying to encourage people to see themselves in a new way as having a missionary orientation.”

Visit the Evangelium website at evangeliumproject.com