A few days ago I noticed that my son, who is 20, had put my picture in his Facebook profile. That was a deep joy for me, a great little sign of being able to give a deeper meaning to my life, well beyond the profession, the thousands of meetings, and the daily choice to be a good person. And in my turn I wanted to share this joy on Facebook. A friend asked me why I use social networks to talk about feelings, emotions, and values like these. And I told him that today Internet is the place to be oneself, to be more real than before, and to communicate your truth without misunderstood intellectual modesty.

I mention these personal considerations to explain with simplicity the deep reason of our proximity to the Church in Her new commitment on Internet. When we, from 3 Italia, met Archbishop Paglia and the entire team of the Pontifical Council for the Family working, in the Vatican, on the project of the new portal, it seemed natural first to provide our enthusiasm and then the skills and resources of the company as a partner of an initiative that marks the difference. We believe it is essential for a large company like ours, with nearly ten million customers, deeply rooted in society and communication – of which our services are a vehicle – must always have at the center of its work for a few large values. Including, without a doubt, the central importance of the family.

Also for this reason, the choice of Pope Benedict XVI to open the Church to the world of Internet, the decision – highly symbolic –  to debut personally on Twitter, to be photographed at the moment of his first tweet (which, not by chance, broke all records of followers in just a few hours) and, in general, the intuition of the possibility and necessity of establishing the community of the faithful in the Web, are gestures that may seem evident; but they are actually great strides towards a new dialogue of the Church and of all Catholics among themselves and especially with those who are not Catholics.

With respect to this decision, the topics concerning the family will have a central role. And by proposing to share debate, analysis and meditations, the new portal, which 3 Italia helped to create, will be... in the middle of the center. The site was born, it seemed to me, with the clever assumption and humble ambition of being immediately the intersection of true life and true community, without expecting to become in a single day the Facebook Catholic families. Born rich with content – distributed in macro-areas and dedicated to many topics of great interest – naturally international and multilingual (the texts are in four languages: Italian, Spanish, English and French) but also open to the contributions others wish to propose to the “social network” that has already been forming around the previous version of the portal.

There’s no need to address wishes to an initiative born social and that knows how to make them on its own: it is perhaps more interesting to repeat that 3 Italia is and will remain at the side of the Pontifical Council for the Family in this work of interpenetration with the Net. What has come to be is not only an Internet portal, but a new way of being Christian. Everyone together, but forever and as always, with the family in the center.