Bishop Robert Baron, digital evangelizer

It is unprecedented, and like its promoter. Outstanding speaker not devoid of humor, a rigorous and open theologian, Monsignor Robert Baron founded in mid-January a new religious order to extend the work of his association Word On Fire, devoted to evangelization on digital. Established in Rochester, in Minnesota, five priests and as many novices should be embarked on the adventure.

It was by radio that this prelate, a former auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, entered the arena, in the late 1990s. Brought by calls for mobilization launched by Jean-Paul II during Denver’s WYD, in 1993, he made himself known with a first video commenting on a film by Martin Scorsese then a regular television program on a cable channel of Chicago. Its Multi-Médias Word On Fire platform unfolds, bringing together all its content.

A recognized teacher

Originally from a family of the middle class of Detroit and Chicago, industrial cities of the Midwest, nothing predestined Robert Baron to such a journey. His meeting in high school with the work of Thomas Aquinas the brand so deeply that, who has become a seminarian in Mundelein (Illinois), he joined the only pontifical university in the country, in Washington, to train in philosophy. He works on the political philosophy of Karl Marx, supports a doctorate of theology at the Catholic Institute of Paris and thus became a recognized teacher, multiplying interventions in the Roman and American theological institutes. Spotted by Pope Francis, he was ordered bishop in 2015 and then appointed head of the little diocese of Winona-Crécster, on his land in Minnesota, in 2022.

Noting the decline of religious feeling in his country, Baron likes to denounce the “beige” Catholicism of his generation. In other words, a sweetened faith, not very visible and little capable of dialogue with the roughness of contemporary culture. However, he does not easily be enhanced in the labels. Neither progressive good complexion nor radical traditionalist, man prefers to move the lines from the inside. In 2011, in a documentary series in ten episodes that made a date, the man passionately presented the genius of Catholicism around the world and the centuries. “Your life is not about you” (“Your life is not just a story that revolves around you”, in French) he often launches to his interlocutors.

An Internet star

Robert Baron thus participated in the remarkable return of the apologetics – these reasoned and explicit announcements of the Christian faith. With a predilection for dialogue with media interlocutors distant from the Christian faith, as recently the psychologist and climatosceptic Jordan Peterson, the controversial computer scientist of MIT Lex Fridudn or the conservative political commentator of Jewish origin Ben Shapiro.

In a quarter of a century, the traveled path is impressive for Mgr Barron: 3 million subscribers on Facebook and almost 2 million on YouTube, more than 500 homilies recorded and more than 1,000 comments videos, more than 80 million views … On social networks, it is 65 the most followed Catholic in the Anglo-Saxon world, just after … Pope Francis.