'Shepherds' for an Information Age 

An excerpt from a review by Fr. Gaston Roberge SJ, founder of Chitrabani, Calcutta (2000)

"The Salesians of Don Bosco in India have produced a manual for the training of their fellow Salesians in communications. Four hundred and forty-two pages in  small types! Quite an achievement. Here is a practical training manual that addresses relevant issues. And these issues are numerous, ranging from sneezing (!), in an excellent chapter on etiquette[i] [one would have loved to read <netiquette>] to communication theology and spirituality. 

“Shepherds” was compiled by Fr. Peter Gonsalves, SDB, with a team of fifteen Salesians, plus one layman and one sister. Fr. Gonsalves himself wrote over 40 of the 119 lessons of the book. As may be expected with so many contributors, the quality of the lessons varies. But, in my view, it varies from good to excellent. On the other hand, the large number of contributors ensures that a degree of variety in the treatment of the different topics.

I welcome “Shepherds” very enthusiastically. The book provides, in the form of short and well-organized lessons, a compendium of material useful for the training of young pastoral agents.

Gaston Roberge, Shepherds or cybernauts? training pastoral agents in religious communication, from a letter to the author of Shepherds... 2000.

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A summary of the assessment of 'Shepherds ...' by media scholar Myron Pereira SJ, of Xavier's Institute of Communication, Mumbai (2000)

While the full archive text of Fr. Pereira's original review is typically preserved in regional Catholic periodicals of that era (such as The Examiner in Mumbai or specialized pastoral communication bulletins), his primary critique and endorsement of Peter Gonsalves' book focused on three central points: 

• A Shift from  Censorship to Competence: Fr. Myron praised the manual for moving the Church away from its historical stance of merely warning seminarists about the "dangers" of media. Instead, he highlighted how the book actively trained future priests to become literate, competent media creators.

• Pedagogical Structure: As an educator himself at XIC, he strongly endorsed the practical structure of the book. Rather than just offering media theory, the manual provided over 90 content-based lesson plans and 32 hands-on skills training sessions integrated across a 9-year seminary curriculum. [1, 2]

• Demystifying the "Information Age": He noted that the book successfully demystified the growing digital landscape of the late 90s and early 2000s, urging the clergy not to fear modern technology but to master it for effective social and pastoral communication.

Recovered by AI 

26 August 2026