Vatican City - If only I could find a photo of Pope Benedict XVI or a passel of cardinals punching keys on their PDAs to illustrate their techno moves.
The Vatican plans to launch a new website -- pope2you.net -- on World Communications Day, May 24 to speak to young people in their own technological terms.
It's an effort to allow younger generations find a "simple, fresh site to work as a hub from which users can find some new ways the universal church is present in the digital world," says Catholic News Service. It has the story, picked up by the Minneapolis paper, Catholic Spirit (thanks to Paulist Press for leading me there).
You can also expect to find such apps as "The Pope Meets You on Facebook," which will allow folks to exchange "virtual postcards" with the pontiff (well, sort of: His messages will be culled from speeches and writings since he has about a billion Catholics to keep an eye on).
And there will be a new way to get audio and video reports from the Vatican on the iPhone. It's billed as the first iPhone app dedicated to the Catholic world, although, the story says, it will have the same news clips as the five-month-old Vatican YouTube channel.
Actually, it's hardly surprising that the Vatican is trolling the technology frontier. Despite the blather in Angels & Demons, the Church is the place where modern science, including physics, was born and nurtured. That said ...
DO YOU THINK ... technology is the answer to drawing and keeping young people in the church?