Poke Benedict XVI

Posted by Ben Hall

May 21, 2009

VATICAN POPE Pope Benedict XVI is taking his religious message digital when today Pope2You.net is launched.

Catholic owners of the iPhone, or users of Facebook, will be able to download and install applications that allow them to track Il Papa with videos of his travels and send Pope e-Cards with ‘the good news’ on them.

In a month that has seen the print industry consider its future online, door-to-door religious messengers may also see their life’s work under threat from the internet.

Monsignor Paul Tighe, secretary to the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, which is responsible for the site, told the Guardian: “If a church does not communicate then it ceases to be a church. It is not simply the technologies of communication that are changing, the culture of communication is changing also.

“Young people are not turning to TV or radio or papers. They have social networks and preferred websites. We’re trying to see what that means for the church.”

The Vatican already runs a YouTube channel and, on its Annual World Communications Day, this Sunday, it will launch its own wiki.

The man behind the development of the new Vatican applications (Vapplications, if you will) is also father of a Facebook application that allows users to share verses and prayers from the Bible.

Though many will welcome the opening of the new, online ‘Pope portal’, the pontiff himself is yet to be convinced. In 2008 he said of the internet: ”If the desire for virtual connectedness becomes obsessive, it may in fact function to isolate individuals from real social interaction.”

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