Surely one reason is that there are 1.2 billion Catholics in the world, 77 million in the United States. A second reason is that there are so many issues surrounding the Church and the Vatican and associated elements. Above both these reasons there are tens of millions that are looking for directions to a better life.
For Pope Francis, there is work to be done. The Church’s pederasty problem must be ended decisively and banished for good. His very traditional views on sexuality and marriage are well known, and he will face opposition in a secular world that chooses not to reconcile with the Church’s moral foundation.
Catholics who have drifted away and left empty pews in the U.S. and Europe must be embraced and returned to the practice of their religion. The decline in religious vocations must be reversed to serve the needs of Catholics desperate for spiritual guidance.
These tasks will form the charter of the newest Roman Catholic Pontiff, who takes on the position at a time when crisis is the norm and the Church is still feeling its way five decades after a step towards modernization whose full ramifications have yet to be appreciated.
Pope Francis has a very small window of time to seize the tiller of his vast ship and navigate a wise course. One critical audience he must address are young people, the future of the Church. He must be an inspiration to this group. They are, after all, the Church’s hope at the start of the third millennium.
He must grasp and leverage the revolutionary technologies that have changed the world. Consider that celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, for better or for worse, are capable of tweeting to millions of fans with frivolous messages, which is a lesson that Pope Benedict VI learned late in his pontificate when he started to use Twitter to much global fanfare but relatively little effect.
Tools such as Twitter and Facebook will allow the new Pope to reach this generation in a personal and immediate way, and to bring them into the faith and address their concerns.
The former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, exercised a very active social media dialog with his, especially on Facebook, where he had more than 40,000 followers. Though since there were a number of postings while he was locked away in conclave, it’s obvious that someone else was delegated the responsibility for keeping his page updated.
But with a pope who obviously understands the need and purpose for social media, it can truly be a threshold moment for the Roman Catholic Church. The leader of Jesus’ flock on Earth, the successor to Peter, can, if he chooses, engage directly and transparently with those seeking his guidance. The Church can act and react not like a creaky, mumbling 2,000-year-old, but like an apostle newly touched by the Holy Spirit.
Social media provides an ideal opportunity for Pope Francis to evangelize in a very real way, much as St. Paul did 2,000 years ago. Paul was a tireless apostle to the Gentiles, an evangelist who for some 20 years traveled throughout the Roman Empire establishing churches and spreading the Gospel.
The new Holy Father can reach as many people with one tweet as the 12 Apostles (including Paul) did in their lifetimes. He can use his Facebook presence to “friend” those organizations that do God’s work on Earth, and help them win more followers and recognition.
Beyond that, the Pope can come to the faithful – and to the rest of the world -- each week on a YouTube channel just as the President of the United States speaks to the people every Saturday. He could give a Sunday sermon that would be replayed in every Catholic church in the world on the same day.
What’s more, Pope Frances can set the tone for a holy, moral and just dialog online, elevating today’s Internet from the ubiquitously profane to something far more spiritual and dignified.
Social media will help the new pontiff be more accessible to more Catholics worldwide in much the same way that a previous generation was educated in matters of faith quite effectively via television and radio by the pioneer televangelist Fulton J. Sheen, who also, I should add, had among his honors two Emmy Awards for Most Outstanding Television Personality. And his shows were so popular they are still being rebroadcast on EWTN and the Trinity Broadcasting Network’s Church Channel.
One prominent Church leader who, like Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, has mastered social media is New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Cardinal Dolan’s “The Gospel in the Digital Age” blog is a lively, personal, educational and spiritual look into the mind of a holy and influential man.
So for the future, imagine, instead of the oft-repeated image of the late Pope John Paul II kissing the ground on every journey abroad, that Pope Francis tweets or posts to Instagram what HE sees – and wants the rest of us to know about. Images of faith, of hope, of charity – inspirational views of our world, ideas of how we might help our fellow men, random acts of kindness, piety and prayer.
Pope Francis will have to be many things, but we may bond with him the most by what he shows us, the world through the eyes of the Fisher of Men. It could be, in the business parlance of our times, a disruptive – and holy – new era for the Church.
* * *
Robert L. Dilenschneider is founder and chairman of The Dilenschneider Group, a global public relations and communications consulting firm headquartered in New York City. The former CEO of Hill and Knowlton, Inc., he is also author of more than a dozen books, including the best-selling “Power and Influence.”
Have a comment? Send it to 
No comments have been submitted for this story yet.