‘People are really looking for God’: Philippine Catholic priests give sermons to Gen-Z on TikTok

As the pandemic forced the country’s faithful online, tech-savvy priests turned the video-sharing app into a virtual pulpit to connect with young believers

But priest Fiel Pareja, who spends six hours a night in his room recording videos, says the challenge is to create content that is creative and ‘not boring’

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Philippine priest Fiel Pareja. Photo: AFP

Published: 3:03pm, 23 Apr 2021Updated: 3:02pm, 23 Apr 2021

After delivering sermons and visiting slums, Philippine priest Fiel Pareja tends to his Gen-Z flock on TikTok, creating videos of himself praying, dancing and lip-synching Christian pop music for 1.6 million followers.

As the coronavirus pandemic forced places of worship to close across the Catholic-majority country, tech-savvy priests like Pareja turned the popular video-sharing platform into a virtual pulpit to connect with young believers.

Pareja spends up to six hours a night in his room in a presbytery north of Manila recording short videos for TikTok – snatching a few hours sleep before starting his real-world pastoral work.

The challenge is to create content that is relatable, creative and “not boring”, said the 30-year-old, who was ordained just weeks before the Covid-19 outbreak sent the country into a months-long lockdown.

Wearing a black cassock and clerical collar, Pareja recites Bible verses and offers prayers in English and Tagalog on everything from fighting anxiety to the restoration of democracy in Myanmar.

In other videos, he dances and lip-synchs to a Christian version of Zedd and Alessia Cara’s song Stay.

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