Is there any doubt left that those of little faith in New Media need to convert?
Vatican launches Pope YouTube channel
Nicole Winfield , The Associated Press , Vatican City | Fri, 01/23/2009 8:03 PM | World
The Vatican launched its on YouTube channel Friday, showcasing clips of Pope Benedict XVI in a bid to both engage with the digital generation and better control the papal image online.
In its inaugural foray on YouTube, the Vatican highlighted one of the pontiff’s latest appeals for peace in the Gaza Strip and showed him welcomingviewers to “feel involved in this great dialogue of truth.”
The site, http://www.youtube.com/vaticanit, was launched the same day the pontiff praised as a “gift to humanity” the potential benefits of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.
But Benedict also warned that virtual socializing ha its risks, saying “obsessive” online networking could isolate people from real social interaction and broaden the digital divide by further marginalizing people.
And in his message for the World Day of Communications, he urged producers of new media to ensure that the content respected human dignity an the “goodness and intimacy of human sexuality.”
The 81-year-old pope has been extremely wary of new media and their effect on society, warning of what he has said was the tendency of entertainment media, in particular, to trivialize sex and promote violence.
But Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli, who heds the Vatican’s social communications office, said the pope fully approved of the Vatican YouTube channel, saying Benedict was “a man of dialogue” who wanted to engage with people wherever they were.
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