vatican

Pope Benedict XVI tweeted the launch of News.va, the new news website from the Vatican.

The site takes a while to load from my iPhone's data connection, but I don't know if that's because (a) the site isn't using a US-based CDN (looks like I'm connecting to Amazon Web Services' western-EU servers), or (b) my iPhone has a 1.5 Mbps connection...

Here's a link to the Pope's (first?) tweet »

Also, it looks like they're using Silverlight or Flash for some content. But at least most of the content is plain-vanilla HTML!

Yesterday the Vatican held its first-ever summit of Catholic bloggers, just a day after the extensive celebration of the Beatification of Pope John Paul II. Many Catholic bloggers from the U.S. attended, and you can view a pretty exhaustive play-by-play in Lisa Hendey's Twitter stream (view the hundreds of tweets from May 1!).

From a report by the Catholic News Service, Richard Rouse said the following on the purpose of the summit:

The Vatican meeting, he said, was not designed as a how-to seminar, and it was not aimed at developing a code of conduct, but rather to acknowledge the role of blogs in modern communications and to start a dialogue between the bloggers and the Vatican.

This is exactly the kind of meta-level view that I think is important to the Church's development of a strong online presence. Many people are too focused on the 'ooh, that's fancy! How do I do that?' way of doing things.

On the Pope's involvement in social media and online communications, Fr. Lombardi had the following to say:

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told the bloggers that while Pope Benedict XVI "is a person who does not Tweet or have a personal blog, he is very attentive and knows well what is happening in the world" and supports Catholic media efforts, as seen by his Good Friday television interview and by his book-length interview with the German writer Peter Seewald.

This is a great model for many of our spiritual leaders to follow; their primary mission is the care of our souls. A person in a sacramental position in the church may, but not must, participate in online communication activities... but never at the forfeit of his mission to care for the souls of God's people—only in support of that mission.

I'm encouraged by what I've heard so far about the summit... but I'm also waiting to hear more personal accounts of the summit, mainly from some of the many American bloggers who attended (Lisa Hendey, again, has a concise list of those who attended in this post).

The Pope delivered his message on the 45th World Day of Communications. Very apropos:

It is an ever more commonly held opinion that, just as the Industrial Revolution in its day brought about a profound transformation in society by the modifications it introduced into the cycles of production and the lives of workers, so today the radical changes taking place in communications are guiding significant cultural and social developments. The new technologies are not only changing the way we communicate, but communication itself, so much so that it could be said that we are living through a period of vast cultural transformation. This means of spreading information and knowledge is giving birth to a new way of learning and thinking, with unprecedented opportunities for establishing relationships and building fellowship.

The Pope has dealt with the Internet, social networking, and mass communications many times in the past. He is always quick to highlight the transformational power new technologies offer—in this case, he compares our communications revolution to the Industrial Revolution.

He is, as always, quick to warn of the dangers involved in this technology's misuse, and reminds us that, as with every tool humanity uses, this tool must, too, be placed at the service of good, rather than evil... and it is up to you and I to do this!

As with every other fruit of human ingenuity, the new communications technologies must be placed at the service of the integral good of the individual and of the whole of humanity. If used wisely, they can contribute to the satisfaction of the desire for meaning, truth and unity which remain the most profound aspirations of each human being.

The Pope warns that online communication, particularly, I think, in the form of status-posting and blogging, "can become a form of self-indulgence." He also warns of the dangers of a digital lifestyle, including "enclosing oneself in a sort of parallel existence," "excessive exposure to the virtual world," and "constructing an artificial public profile for oneself."

The pope continues to remind us that "virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives."

The whole message is incredibly succinct and important for anyone working online to read. Please read it in full—and post your thoughts here!

Further Reading for Thought/Discussion:

• I'm Obsessed with the Obsession
• New Book on "The Church and New Media" 
• Social networking sites are a 'modern form of madness'
• Getting Intimate on Facebook
• Pope Benedict's 43rd World Communications Day Message (2009)
• The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
• How the Internet Gets Inside Us
• Children are happier with their virtual lives and not the real world
• Chris Bowler: "I struggle greatly to focus on one task for any length."

I will be posting more about the themes the Pope highlights in this message in the coming months. I think these issues have been on many people's minds (mine included), with much more frequency, now that social media has begun to truly pervade people's entire lives.

From the CNS:

Pope Benedict XVI unveiled a new Vatican agency to promote "new evangelization" and assigned it the task of combating the "de-Christianization" of countries that were first evangelized centuries ago.

...and of special interest to Open Source Catholic readers, it looks like this agency will work especially through the means of modern communications media, such as social networking:

The archbishop said the council would work closely with modern communications media -- an explicit request of the pope -- and that the council's staff would operate in several languages.

The Pope's apostolic letter went on to speak of the importance of religious values and family in society, and mourns the loss of community and the fact that many live in an "interior desert" as a result of relativism and modernism.

Very poignant; we'll see what comes of this!

The Vatican website (one of the oldest domains/websites on the Internet) has been due for an overhaul for some time. Looks like it's finally going to happen! Here's the news, from EWTN:

The director of the Vatican’s website, Msgr. Lucio Adrian Ruiz explained this week in an interview that the site is going through an extensive redesign to improve the Church's evangelization efforts.

The main reason for the redevelopment? Getting the Vatican website in line with Pope Benedict's call to a new evangelization on the 'digital continent.'

How long will this project take? Well, judging by the fact that the Vatican has over 500,000 pages (many, I am sure, not following any set standard of formatting... making migration scripting very tough), it could be a while.

Msgr. Ruiz said the Vatican site receives three million visits per day, with the greatest number of visits coming from the United States, followed by Italy, Spain, Germany, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Canada, France and China.

He also noted that the site has occasionally been the target of hackers [see an OSC report on one of the recent attacks here] and cyber attacks, but that the staff works closely with Italian online security officials to keep a close eye on their systems.

Just coming off the Catholic New Media Celebration (more info on the CNMC in a blog post here), this is a great step forward for our universal Church. Hopefully we'll see some movement soon!

It looks like the Vatican is going optical! Here are the details, from CathNews Asia:

The Vatican City State has announced a major upgrade to its communications infrastructure including fibre optics links to other Vatican sites including the pontifical villa at Castelgandolfo.

The Governorate of the Vatican City State and Telecom Italia announced the signing of a contract for the installation of the first nucleus of the “Integrated Communication Infrastructure for Vatican City State”, VIS reports.

This consists in a broadband IP network capable of voice, data and video transmission within the territory of the Holy See and Vatican City State, a communique says.

The plan includes, among other things, fibre optic cable links between the ten main extraterritorial sites including the Pontifical Villas at Castelgandolfo and the radio stations in Santa Maria de Galeria.

"Daily Sermonettes" - $5.99 (!)

This just in off the wire:

We invite you to post on your website a feature about the launch of The Vatican Observatory Foundation’s new iPhone App Daily Sermonettes with Father Mike Manning launched Easter Sunday, with daily positive life-affirming messages of hope and faith and extras featuring reflections on major events of the day.

• First-ever iPhone App from any part of the Vatican.
• Follows the Pope’s recent publicized encouragement to spread the Vatican’s message to the faithful through the new media.
• Launched on Easter Sunday.
• Features daily video sermonettes of reflection and faith inspired by Scripture, with practical application to daily life.
• Daily sermonettes presented on camera by Father Mike Manning, recipient of the Pope’s Pro Ecclesia Et Pontifice Cross of excellence.
• Supports the Vatican Observatory Foundation’s humanitarian mission of scientific research, education and discovery.

You can view Daily Sermonettes on the iPhone App Store. The app has no ratings yet, and costs $5.99 (!).

After reading an article (from Six Revisions) on the History of the Internet, I realized just how cutting-edge our Church has been, historically, when it comes to using the web for communications. The Vatican website (www.vatican.va) was one of the first globally-relevant and vast websites in the world!

The site was built in 1995 as a repository of Church documents, and has since been greatly expanded. However, in this time, pages are getting lost, information is, at best, hard to find, and the generic design has barely changed.

Vatican.va - then (1998) and now. Not much has changed, at least on the surface.

What will it take to bring the Vatican back to the fore of the Internet? Pope Benedict, and Pope John Paul II before him, have repeatedly called for the responsible and widespread use of new communications technology in evangelization and preservation of the Gospel... let's get back on top of the game!

Steps Towards a Better Website

What can the Vatican do to get back in the game? Well, here are a few suggestions:

1. Get on a CMS. And make the site truly multi-lingual. Drupal would be a good choice, with it's i18n module. Content should be published in multiple languages quickly and properly-translated.
2. Auto-detect the user's region and give him the front page in their own language, with the option of changing languages.
3. Put more evangelical information on the front page. A picture of Saint Peter's square doesn't suffice. Have something that will bring a newcomer further into the site (maybe a tie-in to the Vatican Museums?).
4. Highlight Papal encyclicals and Church documents; perhaps start a blog for topics covered in the plethora of online documents!
5. Get rid of the ugly, 90s-era repeating background image. But keep an elegant, relatively-timeless style.

These are just a few of my suggestions – many more can be had. What do you think?

What if the USCCB offered the Bible via an API so programmers/iPhone App developers/web developers could query a verse or chapter for display/search?

What if the Vatican offered better searching, indexing, and referencing for their vast library of Papal encyclicals, Church Council documents, and other other messages?

What if the USCCB offered, perhaps, some sort of 'widget' for displaying a random bible quote, the day's readings (or a blurb from said readings), and other Bible-related topics on people's blogs, websites, etc.?

I really hope these kinds of things become reality, and sooner rather than later. Does anyone know if these kinds of issues are even on the radar?

I'd also like to find out more about how our Church is working towards the lofty goals set forth in Inter Mirifica, the letters for the World Day of Communication each year, etc., besides implementing a YouTube channel and Facebook app. I'll volunteer time to help accomplish some of these goals—can't we bring some of these projects into the 'open source' sphere? The dogmas of the Church are not 'open source,' but couldn't the technologies be more so?