The Pope's on Facebook: Time to Check Out his Spring Break Photos

When it comes to cutting edge communication technologies the Catholic Church doesn't usually come to mind: The "venerable" institution only stopped performing it Mass in the long dead language Latin last century, and, truth be told, still utilizes Latin in many of its churches and Masses worldwide. Early adopters they ain't. So it comes as a bit of a surprise to hear the Pope ask his priests to engage the worldwide community via the worldwide web.

According to the Wall St. Journal:

In a world wrapped up around technology, priests and church figures should make better use of the gamut of digital tools available to them to disseminate the church’s message to the people, Pope Benedict XVI said on Sunday, during the 44th annual World Communications Day.

The pope’s message proclaimed that “priests can rightly be expected to be present in the world of digital communications as faithful witnesses to the Gospel” through means such as “images, videos, animated features, blogs [and] Web sites.” A brief clip of the speech that the pope gave can be viewed through the Vatican channel on YouTube.

This pope’s message this year stood in sharp contrast with a speech he gave late last year when he accused the mass media of poisoning human souls and making us callous to violence.

”This poison makes our faces darker and makes us smile less, stopping us from greeting one another or making eye contact,” pope Benedict said.

I would suggest that "poisoning human souls" and "making us callous to violence" is the job of religion, which had been effectively ruling all media until Gutenberg, and is only now making efforts at engaging us (rather than ruling us) because of its dwindling power base.

In entering the 21st Century:

...the Vatican launched a YouTube channel and a Facebook account a year ago while urging Facebook users to “be careful, therefore, never to trivialize the concept or the experience of friendship.”

In May 2009, the Vatican launched a new site, www.pope2you.net, which includes an iPhone application.

The pope’s Facebook page has more than 87,000 fans, but he doesn’t have a Twitter account yet.

When he does get a Twitter account going the Pope promises to save our souls in 140 characters or less.