MANILA, Philippines, April 17, 2002 — The Roman Catholic church will start spreading the "Good News" in the Philippines via cell phone text-messaging technology.
Archbishop Cardinal Jaime Sin announced the campaign — called "catextism" — in a play on the term catechism. The new text message service will feature spiritual messages, prayers and random passages from the Bible. "We are now a 'text generation,' " wrote Sin, "And so the Church seeks to avail of this potential tool for evangelization and spiritual nourishment."
He said the campaign was in response to a recent challenge by Pope John Paul II "to make room for Christ in mass communications."
Text messages are very popular among young Filipinos.
More than 100 million text messages are generated in the Philippines daily. This figure represents about 10-15 percent of global text messaging traffic according to Ramon Isberto, spokesperson for the local mobile phone company Smart Communications.
Source: Bible Network News, with notes from AP
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