Catholic Institutional Communication on X: Forms of Presence in Digital Space in the Light of Towards Full Presence

This article examines how an institutional actor within the Catholic Church uses the social media platform X. The study analyzes a corpus of 60 publications from the official account of a selected Catholic ecclesial entity. The textual layer is examined using the author-developed Full Presence Analytical Framework (FPAF), which distinguishes three forms of presence: self-presentational, informational, and communicative. Informational presence (61.7%) and self-presentational presence (38.3%) are the dominant forms, while no indicators of communicative presence were identified. The findings indicate that X was used primarily for information dissemination and institutional visibility rather than for relational and community-building communication. They are interpreted in light of the Dicastery for Communication’s Towards Full Presence, which understands digital presence as a movement from connection toward relationship, community, and communion. The article contributes to research on religious media by operationalizing distinctions among forms of presence and showing that analysis of platform use can reveal dimensions of religious communication that remain less visible in conventional thematic content analysis. It also demonstrates how empirical analysis of media practices can contribute to religious studies, particularly practical theology.