“I was very anti-Catholic because I did not see my parents as good practicing Christians and I had several misconceptions about Catholicism,” recounts Franco Aurelio Fernandez, a young man raised by a single mother in the busy, multicultural city of New York. He now dedicates his life to digital evangelization, with more than 50,000 followers on Instagram alone.
The popular digital evangelist is a collaborator of an influential pro-life activist, and is the content creator for his own accounts. In an interview he shares with us his spiritual journey and the encounter with God in the Catholic Church that led him to convert and want to announce the gospel to Generation Z. Regarding his path, he said:
My mother didn't have me go through Confirmation after finding out that it was a several-month process, so I was only baptized and had my First Communion. I lived a very secular life in general. I considered Islam in high school but didn't take it too seriously in finding out more. Eventually I ended up taking an interest in New Age Spirituality but that only lasted for a short time before I told myself it all just seemed like a catalyst to be a better person rather than being actually real.
In fact, “the more I became informed,” he said, the more "I realized my compassion and care for people was being exploited and the things I supported actually harmed the people I was trying to defend.”
This led him to an important conclusion: “I saw that Christianity was aligned with a lot of the morals I had already come to realize as wiser than other advice I had heard. (...) Reading the Bible reaffirmed all the morals I was coming to appreciate.” And he wasn’t alone as he walked this path. “God placed a lot of good Catholic influences in my life that corrected me in my misconceptions, and it got to the point where I was on a streak of constantly receiving solid answers about the Catholic Church that I decided to take a leap of faith. (...) I was confirmed last year, in 2023.”
We need to know and teach the truth
Thanks to his personal experience, Franco defends the idea that philosophical and scientific explanations are enormously effective for the vast majority of his generation, Gen Z. Consequently, he seeks to bring that information to them via social media platforms.
“I think it's a worse tragedy when a person is told incorrect Catholic teaching than no Catholic teaching at all. We need to know exactly what the Church teaches and WHY She has those teachings.”
However, he points out that we shouldn’t lose sight of the reasons why we fail to form and inform others as Catholics. “It is of no use to perfectly know what and why the Church has Her teachings if Catholics are prideful and arrogant when trying to teach.” Therefore, he calls on young people to evangelize with their God-given gifts by “first learning what God actually teaches and communicating it in a way that can win hearts.”
Digital evangelization
Franco shares that digital evangelization has been an invigorating and very challenging journey, but acknowledges that internet platforms are enormously popular today. In addition, the challenges of social media taught him a lesson:
Sin and temptation are present, and that reminds me to increase my prayer life and continue to ask for the grace of humility. I long to be an example that shows that it’s possible to do great things without becoming corrupt.
He adds, “The message that I want to share in total summary would be that of humility and love and those two key virtues are perfectly found in Jesus through His Catholic Church that He established to guide us to perfectly learn these two virtues that He so perfectly incarnates.”
