“I came to know the Order in 2015, through good website SEO. I typed ‘Augustinians’ in Google and the first thing I got was Augustinian Recollects. That was the first time I had the first contact with the Order”, this is how the Venezuelan communicator Harold La Cruz, and member of the team of Communications and Digital Evangelization of the Province of Saint Thomas of Villanova, explains his first contact with the Order.
“Being in a digital space is a priority if you seek to communicate the Good News.”
Today, Harold is part of the team that manages the digital communication of the Province, along with other lay people and friars. As he explained in this interview, according to him, digital presence is fundamental for evangelization: “Being in a digital space is, shall we say, a priority if we seek to communicate the Good News, because it is a place where we obviously meet many people.”
“The proper and the Augustinian.”
In this sense, he underlined the positive impact of digital content in the transmission of the Augustinian Recollect charism: “In general terms, the work is having a positive impact. Producing content that is very much our own and, beyond informing, perhaps also with that formative topic, with that Augustinian touch, I think that is what, in a world in which we have too much access to a lot of information, could give that added value to the content that can be produced: what is our own and what is Augustinian, which is what identifies us within the charism.” .
“The way in which St. Augustine presents things is very current, and I think that is a huge advantage, strength, knowing that there is a support from someone who is the one who properly imprints that identity as an Augustinian Recollect.”
In connection with the recent meeting of the Order’s communicators in RomeLa Croce underlined that it seems to him that It is “super advantageous and I think that, in the end, it will be a mega strength to have put in common all the initiatives that we have as an Order. In the end, it also allows one to see with a more holistic vision all that the Order is doing and not the small work that perhaps, as a province, one may believe that one is doing. And to be able to understand ourselves from the Order and not from a I think it was super valuable.
Finally, he emphasized the relevance of St. Augustine’s thought today: “I believe that the way in which St. Augustine presents things becomes very current, and I think that is a giant advantage, strength, to know that there is a backing of someone who is the one who properly imprints that identity as an Augustinian Recollect.”