When Fr Eduardo Emilio Aguero SCJ of the Priests of the Sacred Heart was appointed director of O Clarim in May, he emphasized a restructuring that will partly shift the focus of O Clarim’s operations from a traditional print structure to a digital model. Following up on a move initiated by his predecessor, Fr Eduardo Aguero was confident to respond effectively to the challenges amid today’s cultural shifts, to which young people are especially sensitive, and which necessarily involves using new communication technologies. The Argentine priest highlighted this undertaking when he said, “If you’re going to evangelize, you need to reach people where they are.”
We may recall that O Clarim was established when print and newspapers were the dominant media force in Macau. Today, the landscape has dramatically transitioned to a digital platform, where information is frequently sought and shared in real time. O Clarim continues to fulfil its evangelization mission in a trilingual-medium (Portuguese, Chinese and English) weekly newsmagazine. It serves as a window into the Catholic Diocese of Macau for the China regions and the world.
In addition to retooling how O Clarim disseminates its missions, Fr Eduardo also reorganized the human resources of O Clarim, including its outsourced collaborators and writers. He reinforced its dedicated digital and editorial team, and provided technical resources to come up with the most comprehensive coverage of local church news, life, history, and Catholic culture presentations from Macau. José Miguel Encarnação remains responsible for the editorial direction and content procurement of the Portuguese section. The Filipino priest Fr. Leonard E Dollentas works in the English section and as O Clarim’s finance coordinator. The digital team is supervised by Jasmin Yiu, the Chinese edition editor, with specialists who will focus on web development, digital media, graphic design, and content coordination.
Fr. Eduardo Aguero also aims at forming a creative services team to develop multimedia content, using elements of graphics and video that contain highlights of O Clarim articles, with the use of other digital platforms. He believes that the multimedia evangelization of O Clarim should gain the interest of the local youth of the parishes of Macau.
For more than 15 years, Fr Eduardo Aguero was in various mission ministries in the Philippines, including the far-flung barangays in Cebu. He admits that he has no formal training in journalism, yet he declares that it is now God’s job to guide him completely, every step of the way on this new journey with Him. With his background in biblical theology, he uniquely combines his pastoral experience, an understanding of cultures, and his love for the poor in his written reflections and articles. Despite his busy ministry in O Clarim, he also devotes his time to ministry at the Carmo parish in Taipa, and he teaches biblical courses at St. Joseph Seminary.
Under the leadership of Fr Eduardo Aguero, O Clarim is challenged to proclaim the gospel by employing the latest generation of audio-visual resources, images, videos, animated features, blogs, and websites which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for reaching out to the faithful, evangelization, and catechesis.
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