In recent times the Vatican has been open about their perception of how the internet fits into the scheme of things from a religious standpoint. This is not a surprise as the internet has become nearly inseparable from our daily lives, as religion is to a number of us as well.

The somewhat “quakeresque” public perception of religious leadership is that anything “tech” is bad and living in an 1800’s way of life with a candle, and wooden shack and a Holy Bible is something we should all aspire to.

Possibly contrary to the stereotype, Pope Benedict XVI is encouraging his priests to become more versed in internet and technical things. The Vatican has been very much near the cutting edge, believe it or not, for most of the internet’s existence.

For example; The Vatican / Holy See has had its own internet ccTld since inception of the naming standard. The registration web site is http://www.nic.va, which is currently offline. The only used .va extension is vatican.va and the website is live.

Some of the content on the Vatican site is the PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS.

Here is where the Vatican explains its position with regard to the internet. The site is very content heavy, and perhaps a bit wordy, but very thorough. The Pope has also weighed in on internet issues in the past.
Last year he warned ICANN of the “perils” of allowing new internet domains such as “.catholic, .anglican, .orthodox, .hindu, .islam, .muslim, and perhaps .buddhist”. The Pope felt there was the danger of over or under acknowledging each religion and the problems that could follow sanctioning and not sanctioning each possible extension.

Given the overall Muslim reaction to Israel, fundamentalist cartoons, and even our own World Trade Center, its hard to argue with the Pope’s opinion to err on the side of caution when mixing religion and law.
In addition to the Vatican’s multilingual Web site, it has recently launched the “Pope2you” portal, which offers a Facebook app, iPhone app, YouTube channel, and selected videos.

The pope has cautioned his internet handlers to use discretion and be mindful of social media content. Executives from Facebook, Wikipedia and Google also attended a Vatican meeting to brief officials and Catholic bishops about the Internet and digital youth culture.
He says: “Priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart, their closeness to Christ. This will not only enliven their pastoral outreach, but also will give a ’soul’ to the fabric of communications that make up the Web.”

The meeting which addressed Internet copyright issues and hacking, included testimony from a young Swiss hacker and an Interpol cyber-crime official. The Vatican’s top communications official, Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, has said a key priority of the Catholic Church is to be able to use new technologies to spread its message, particularly to the young.

“Our dream in this global village created by new technologies is that the church and Jesus’ disciples can have their tent – Jesus’ tent – so that the attention of men and women who walk the streets of the world is turned toward it,” he said recently on Vatican Radio.

Coincidentally, there is an internet cafe near the vatican called “Hackers” which is a Restaurant that serves pizza, beer, has state-of-the-art computers on-site and also provides internet access. In case anyone would like to add it to their travel itinerary, it is at address: Via Sebastiano Veniero 10-16 in Vatican City, tel: 06-3973-9268.

The Vatican has a notable history on the internet starting with the founders of Apple computer.

Using a captain crunch whistle, Steve Wozniak actually called the Vatican as a prank. He asked for the pope, and said, this is Henry Kissinger calling on behalf with Richard Nixon at the summit meeting in Moscow. He actually didn’t get anywhere as the Archbishop had spoken to Henry Kissinger early that day, and would not grant access to the Pope, as the story goes.

Later, Pope John Paul II used mass media and information technology to get out his message, overseeing the 1995 launch of the Vatican’s Web site, http://www.vatican.va. Virtual tours, and audio feeds from Vatican Radio can be found on the website.
The radio stations are: Vatican Radio Ch1  Vatican City, Vatican Radio “One-O-Five live”: Italian, English,
French and Spanish, Vatican Radio Ch2  Vatican City, Arabic, Czech, Croatian, Esperanto, French, English,
Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish,German, Hungarian.
Vatican Radio Ch3  Vatican City Albanian, Armenian, Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Esperanto,
Philippine, Latvian, Lithuanian, Rumanian, Russian,Scandinavian, Ukranian
Vatican Radio Ch4  Vatican City  Amharic, Chinese, French (Africa), Hindi, English (Africa),
English (India), Kiswahili, Malealam, Portuguese (Africa),Somali, Spanish, Tamil, Tigrino, Vietnamese.
Vatican Radio Ch5  Vatican City Arabic, French, English, Portuguese (Portugal, Brazil),
Spanish (Spain, Ispanoamerica).
But even in the wake of the Vatican trying to stay current, it still has online shortcomings.
Earlier in the year, Pope Benedict stated that he was disappointed that Vatican officials hadn’t done a simple Internet search to discover the Holocaust-denying comments of an ultraconservative bishop whose excommunication he had lifted.
Pope Benedict wrote a letter to his bishops saying that he had “learned the lesson” after public outrage over Bishop Richard Williamson’s re-instatement. The Pope assured all the Vatican would in the future pay greater attention to the Internet as a source of news.

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