These days, it seems everybody has a YouTube channel. The latest entrant into the digital-media mix is none other than Pope Benedict XVI.
The 81-year-old pope made the YouTube channel announcement during the Catholic Church’s World Day of Communications. The theme was New Technologies, New Relationships: Promoting a Culture of Respect, Dialogue and Friendship.
The Vatican is taking advantage of social media to reach the masses even as the Catholic Church warns today’s youth not to get obsessed with new media. The YouTube channel will offer links to Vatican and Catholic Web sites and video channels around the world.
The Pope on Facebook?
The Vatican channel is broadcasting short video news clips that feature the pope’s activities as well as Vatican and Catholic Church events. The clips are currently available in English, Spanish, German and, of course, Italian.
The Vatican channel will have daily updates. News clips will run about two minutes. The Vatican television center is producing the clips in cooperation with Vatican Radio journalists and Web managers.
The Vatican launched its first Web site in 1995 and seems to be open to leveraging additional social-media technologies. YouTube is the first effort, but Archbishop Claudio Celli has indicated that the Catholic Church may have its own Facebook page one day.
Don’t Neglect Human Contact
The pope’s message to YouTube users revealed the Catholic Church’s motive: To put social media in “the service of the truth.” The pope also warned not to disregard human contact and to seek quality online relationships rather than quantity.
“It would be sad if our desire to sustain and develop online friendships were to be at the cost of our availability to engage with our families, our neighbors, and those we meet in the daily reality of our places of work, education and recreation,” the pope wrote in a message.
“If the desire for…