The Vatican, whose communications problems are no secret, is taking a leap into the world of new media with the launch next week of a news information portal that Pope Benedict XVI himself may put online with a papal click. Vatican officials said Saturday that Pope Benedict has been following the development of the portal which will for the first time aggregate information from the Vatican’s various print, online, radio and television media in a one-stop-shop for Holy See news. The portal is being launched Wednesday, the 60th anniversary of Pope Benedict’s ordination as a priest. Monsignor Caludio Maria Celli who leads the Vatican office that developed the portal and will maintain it, said the Pope may put the site online himself with a click from the Apostolic Palace. It’s the latest effort by the Vatican to bring its evangelizing message to a greater, Internet-savvy audience. It’s also a significant step for the 84 year old Benedict, who has been bedeviled by communications woes during much of his six year papacy, much of it the fault of a large Vatican bureaucracy that doesn’t always communicate well internally. While the portal is designed mostly to provide Vatican news in an easy to use setting for the outside world, Celli said he hoped it would also improve the Vatican’s own internal communications by letting various departments know what one another are up to and help provide a more coherent message. The portal is outfitted for live streaming of papal events, audio feeds from Vatican Radio, photographs from L’Osservatore Romano and printed texts of Papal homilies, statements and speeches. It’s also designed to be social- media friendly, with Twitter feeds and Facebook links – part of the Vatican’s recent realization that it can reach a wide new audience by interacting witht eh outside world rather than merely preaching from afar.
