Faith Central: The Pope on Facebook

The Vatican is seeking ways to embrace full online “interactivity” with all one billion members of the global Roman Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church wants to emulate and globalise President Obama’s use of the internet both during his election campaign and with more recent events, such as an online question-and-answer session at the end of March that attracted 100,000 questions and 3.6 million votes.

The new strategy was outlined by the Jesuit priest Father Frederico Lombardi, long-standing head of Vatican Radio, who also took over as head of the Holy See press office on the election of Pope Benedict XVI.

Father Lombardi was addressing priests, bishops, journalists and Church press officers in a lecture at the Westminster seminary, Allen Hall, to mark the Church’s annual world day of communications.

He referred to recent controversies such as the speech in Regensburg, when Pope Benedict XVI provoked condemnation from Muslims worldwide by quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor who was critical of Islam.

Father Lombardi also addressed the Pope’s comments about condoms on his Africa trip, when he said that they could even “aggravate” the Aids crisis, and the decision to remit the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop.

He said the overall publicity had been good for the Church and the wider world.

“I am convinced that the question of Christian-Muslim relations has been addressed more frankly, more seriously and with greater depth after Regensburg than before,” he said.

The “clamorous response” to Bishop Williamson allowed the Church to make its true positions on the Holocaust more widely known and clearly understood and even to strengthen Jewish-Catholic relations, he added.

“The debate over condoms is leading to greater understanding and awareness of what truly effective HIV/Aids prevention strategy is in Africa and elsewhere,” he said.

In an age when the internet surpassed all other media except television as the principal source of national and international news, the Church could not ignore communications developments, or allow itself to fall out of touch with them, he said.

He was not saying however that everything the Vatican did was perfect.

“I do think, however, in a world such as ours, we would be deluding ourselves if we thought that communication can always be carefully controlled, or that it can always be conducted smoothly and as a matter of course.”

No great institution or personality could ever avoid some criticism.

“It is a mistake to think that we ought to avoid debate. We must always seek to conduct debate in a way that leads to a better understanding of the Church's position, and we must never get discouraged.” The internet presented “very grave risks” but there was also great potential for good.

The Holy See has already opened its YouTube channel and at Easter, it broadcast the Pope’s message with subtitles in 27 different languages - a YouTube record.