Aperto per ferie: third spaces meet pastoral contexts

Abstract

Media education is a cultural framework that can be applied in different contexts: schools, families, informal educational environments, along with pastoral work. With Pope Francis’ championing, there is an increasing need to bridge pastoral care and the media, which can become new important forms of proximity and open opportunities to connect and assume responsibility towards others. Our aim is to understand how parishes can think of themselves as third spaces. The paper tackles this question through the exploration of the initiative Aperto per ferie. The initiative was created to enable professionals to experience the summer camp activities despite the Covid-19 pandemic, finding new ways of aggregation in pastoral youth clubs and taking advantage of digital community meetings. It developed a digital space to promote a unifying experience. With digital technologies, the boundaries of the community are redrawn. The correspondence with the territory (of the parish and the diocese) is no longer pre-determined. A community with porous edges is making its way and is more open and permeable to contributions coming from outside, and perhaps more accessible, even by those who do not frequent parish environments.