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Pope Uses an iPad, Tweets for the First Time to Announce News and Information Portal

Jun. 28, 2011 7:20pm Billy Hallowell

VATICAN CITY (The Blaze/AP) — Attention, world: Pope Benedict XVI has tweeted for the first time, announcing the launch of a Vatican news information portal. Of course, one of the world’s most renowned religious figures wasted no time praising Christ in his first social networking message:

Vatican officials said the Benedict touched on a “touchpad” to send the tweet. Images show the “touchpad” to be an iPad (which is confirmed in text shown below the Tweet, itself).

The portal http://www.news.va was launched for the feast day of St. Peter and Paul, which falls on June 29 but officially begins with a vesper service June 28. For the first time, the site aggregates information from the Vatican’s various print, online, radio and television media. Over the past few months, the holy institution has been increasingly embracing social media. AFP has more:

The Vatican [has launched] popular Facebook and YouTube pages and [has been] courting bloggers as it tries to get the Church’s message out to a wider and more youthful audience.

The Church also used a website to receive notifications of purported miracles attributed to late pope John Paul II and is launching an e-learning initiative to address the problem of child abuse by priests

The Church also discussed creating an app for confessions, but officials inevitably decided against it. Thus, priests will still need to hear church members confess their sins in person. Nonetheless, the Catholic Church has come leaps and bounds in its embrace of social technologies.

Wednesday also marks the 60th anniversary of Benedict’s ordination as a priest.

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Comments (19)

justfacts
Posted on July 1, 2011 at 2:04pm
Look at other websites that ran this story and you will get a more accurate representation of what people think of it. Very few posts here (only 19 as of 7/1), all of them sound like they came from the catholic church (except the one token alternative view). It’s clear that the Blaze heavily censors its blog. Two comments, then, that i hope do not get censored: (1) we all know what inbreeding (of humans and ideas) produces (2) if you can’t take the heat of uncensored opinions, TheBlaze, maybe you should get out of the kitchen.

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Doc_Slammin
Posted on June 30, 2011 at 10:25am
I happened to run across an article written by, of all people, a Franciscan Friar who is also an ordained Catholic priest.

I have never read an article that explains the quote, “love the sinner and not the sin” in a better way.

Join the anti-tolerance league

http://franciscanbrothersminor.com/FBM/The_Anti-Tolerance_League.html

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- Charity in Truth
  Posted on June 30, 2011 at 9:41pm
  Thank you for this article. I recommend everyone to read it, too.
  
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Classical Liberal
Posted on June 29, 2011 at 10:51pm
I can’t say I’m a twitter fan, but it’s very interesting to see it used in this way

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Charity in Truth
Posted on June 29, 2011 at 5:15pm
PRAISED BE OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST!

I love the Pope’s first tweet and expect more of the same.

Please keep Pope Benedict XVI in your prayers.

The Truth is not always popular.

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SirJamesBond007
Posted on June 29, 2011 at 3:38pm
Wow. And I was expecting to see comments about how the Ipad was now officially canonized.

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Twit123
Posted on June 29, 2011 at 2:13pm
Praise the Lord! This is beautiful! May God empower the service of the Catholic church to bring the lost closer to God! There are so many lost people in their journey. May they find the path, where Jesus is going. “Jesus said, I am the way, the life and the truth, no one can come to the Father except through me!”John 14:6

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opinionated
Posted on June 29, 2011 at 1:56pm
Mossbrain. I have a very difficult time with ignorant bigots like you.

However I shall continue to pray for the grace ‘to love the sinner and hate the sin’.

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Delicaterose65
Posted on June 29, 2011 at 1:17pm
@ Mossbrian are you a Perv??? I believe so! God Bless you and get the Demons out of you!! God Bless you Sir! From a LOVING Cathloic, I will pray for you today!!

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Wakawl
Posted on June 29, 2011 at 11:06am
Nice.
Now I see the vatican is doing advertisements for apple….

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ILoveGlenn
Posted on June 29, 2011 at 10:19am
That’s pretty good. Taking advantage of every technology to reach more and more people. It happed also when radio/ TV and internet were inveted

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mycomet123
Posted on June 29, 2011 at 10:09am
MOSSBRAIN? The name says it all.

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WalterShumatelives
Posted on June 29, 2011 at 4:29am
The powers that be have us right were they want us. Like frogs in a boiling pot of water we sit and go about while the temperature slowly rises. The powers that be slowly place there pieces about the chess board. The powers know the problem with America is that its full of Americans. Like in the movie Braveheart “If we can’t get them out, we will breed them out”. An all out war with America would be long and take up valuable resources as well as risk its abundant real estate. Cut the throat of America and bleed out the freedom, the very essence of what it is to be an American, leaving the carcass to be consumed by its host. Strategically the powers infiltrate America’s infrastructure and like termites eat away from the inside out. America is now ripe for the picking with vultures like china and Russia circling over head waiting to feast. We Americans who are waking up to the fog of war are hesitant to engage are enemy, as they watch to gauge are reaction. What do we do?, who do we kill? And when do we strike. Do we wait for the invasion or the blue helmets before we get together and get to work?. Now is the time to react!. They started it but will we will finish it?.

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- Jack of Hearts
  Posted on June 29, 2011 at 7:18am
  ….and how exactly does this relate to the Pope’s ipad? I’m new to the site, but with this and the guy who’s saving money buying stuff on the internet (under several different names) I’m a little confused. The Report Post button doesn’t work either.
  
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Cold War Vet
Posted on June 29, 2011 at 4:14am
I’m not sure if Twitter’s servers are strong enough for that kind of bandwidth. There are over a billion Catholics in the world, and at least several hundreds of millions of them have internet access. They’d better hope he doesn’t tweet anything that warrants a response!

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Cold War Vet
Posted on June 29, 2011 at 4:11am
Wow! That was a cheap shot from the lowest gutter of existence! Are you proud?

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Komponist-ZAH
Posted on June 29, 2011 at 12:40am
Where’s the “Report Post” button?

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AmeriWoman
Posted on June 29, 2011 at 12:24am
Awesome. I like this idea, more of our spiritual leaders need to join Twitter and Facebook.

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- Komponist-ZAH
  Posted on June 29, 2011 at 12:38am
  Whatever it takes to get the Gospel into people’s ears and hearts.
  
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