VATICAN CITY (UCAN) — The new Vatican YouTube channel will make information from the Holy See more accessible to the world, Pope Benedict XVI told thousands of pilgrims on Sunday, two days after the launch.

 

Speaking in St. Peter’s Square on Jan. 25, he said new technologies had made the Internet a resource of utmost importance.

“Undoubtedly, the wise use of communications technology enables communities to be formed in ways that promote the search for the true, the good and the beautiful, transcending geographical boundaries and ethnic divisions,” he said. “To this end, the Vatican has launched a new initiative which will make information and news from the Holy See more readily accessible on the World Wide Web.”

He said he hoped the Vatican channel on the video-sharing website (www.youtube.com/vatican) would “enrich a wide range of people, including those who have yet to find a response to their spiritual yearning, through the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ.”

At a Vatican press conference on January 23, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi said Vatican media understood the importance of getting their images, sounds and texts about the Pope and Vatican events onto the Internet.

“It is a wholly natural evolution, which corresponds to the presence of the Church in the world”, explained Father Lombardi, director of the Holy See’s Press Office.

The priest also directs Vatican Radio and the Vatican Television Center (CTV), which have been cooperating to produce video news available on the Vatican Radio website in different languages for 18 months. The new venture will reach beyond the regular Catholic audience to a global audience.

The channel offers video news of the pope and Vatican events through two-minute clips that are updated once or twice daily in English, German, Italian and Spanish. The channel’s homepage includes links to Vatican Radio, CTV and the websites of the Holy See and Vatican City State. YouTube also facilitates messaging.

“The launching of a channel like this is obviously the beginning of a journey,” Father Lombardi said, adding that significant developments were expected in cooperation with Google, which owns YouTube.

Henrique De Castro, Google’s managing director for media solutions, told the press conference that technology brings people together. About 1.4 billion people are already online, with more joining them every day, he said.

Sites like YouTube are enabling people to foster existing communities and create new ones around interests, issues and faith, at both local and global levels, he continued, saying more than 15 hours of material is uploaded to YouTube every minute.

“There has been a communications revolution, and video has become one of the world’s common languages,” he remarked. “(The Catholic Church) understands this opportunity, and has embraced it,” De Castro said, hailing the initiative as “a landmark announcement for YouTube.”

Referring to the evolution of the Vatican media from a 16th-century printing press to today’s multi-media approach, he described the new channel on as “a perfect combination of continuity and innovation.”

During the same press conference, Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said the pope had personally approved the YouTube channel.

By choosing to appear online to viewers, he “is making a pilgrimage to the person in his or her room … to the heart of every person,” the archbishop said.

The pope also is making himself vulnerable by taking the risk of having his message distorted and abused, Archbishop Celli acknowledged, but he added that this is the path of incarnation, chosen by God who became man.

Monsignor Paul Tighe, the council’s secretary, said a revolutionized culture of communications is part of the world the new digital generation lives in.

The new technology and culture “have changed the ways people communicate, the ways they associate and form communities, the ways by which they learn about the world, the ways in which they engage with political and commercial organizations,” he said.

In the past, “we tended to see the reader, listener or watcher of media as a passive spectator of centrally generated content.” But today “we must understand the audience as more selectively and interactively engaging with a wider range of media.”

In a word, “the logic of communications has … radically changed,” Monsignor Tighe said.