VATICAN CITY – You will not get an e-mail saying Pope Benedict added you as a friend, and you cannot “poke” him or write on his wall, but the Vatican is still keen to use the networking site Facebook to woo young people back to the Church.
A new Vatican website, www.pope2you.net, has gone live, offering an application called “The pope meets you on Facebook”, and another allowing the faithful to see the pope’s speeches and messages on their iPhones or iPods.
The Vatican’s World Communications Day this Sunday is devoted to communicating the gospel with new technologies.
“We recognise that a church that does not communicate ceases to be a church,” said Msgr Paul Tighe, secretary of the Vatican’s social communications section.
Users of the new site can select from more than a dozen “virtual postcards” which can be sent to other users. These contain pictures of the pope and messages from him on faith, love and life aimed at young people.
Last January the pope became one of the oldest people to have his own YouTube channel. The pope is known to write most of his speeches by hand, while his aides manage his forays into cyberspace. – (Reuters)