POPE BENEDICT XVI has often seemed like a retiring, media-shy, other-worldly academic but that did not stop him launching his own YouTube channel yesterday, a YouTube site called simply “The Vatican” and available in English, Spanish, German and Italian.
The new site, illustrated by the unmistakable Bernini colonnade in St Peter’s Square, states that it will offer “news coverage of the main activities of the Holy Father” while its video-news will present “the Catholic Church’s position regarding the principal issues of the world today”.
Visitors to the site yesterday could consult the Vatican’s daily news bulletin, read the online version of the Vatican daily, L’Osservatore Romano, or watch a dozen Vatican TV news clips of the Pope’s most recent activities.
The launch of the new channel was timed to coincide with the release of the Pope’s annual message for the Church’s World Day of Communications.
Despite his enthusiastic embrace of the internet on the YouTube site, the Pope used his World Communications Day message to urge young people to seek human contact and not isolate themselves on the web.
“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 neighbours and those we meet in the daily reality of our places of work, education and recreation,” writes the Pope.
Earlier yesterday the Pope appeared to be heading for another bitter controversy with the worldwide Jewish community.
Rome’s chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, was one of many Jewish leaders to express his dismay at reports earlier this week that Pope Benedict was considering lifting the 1988 excommunication of four traditionalist, “Lefebvre” bishops, members of the Society of St Pius X.
The Jewish leaders are especially concerned about one of the four Bishops, British-born Richard Williamson, who has given a number of TV interviews in which he denies the full extent of the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews.
Rabbi Di Segni told La Stampa yesterday that the re-admission of Bishop Williamson into the Catholic Church “would open a deep wound in dialogue with Judaism”.