Faith

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

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:

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

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.

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.

    Report Post »  
  • 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

    Report Post » Doc_Slammin  
  • 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

    Report Post » Classical Liberal  
  • 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.

    Report Post »  
  • 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.

    Report Post »  
  • 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

    Report Post »  
  • 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’.

    Report Post »  
  • 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!!

    Report Post » Delicaterose65  
  • Wakawl
    Posted on June 29, 2011 at 11:06am

    Nice.
    Now I see the vatican is doing advertisements for apple….

    Report Post »  
  • 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

    Report Post » ILoveGlenn  
  • mycomet123
    Posted on June 29, 2011 at 10:09am

    MOSSBRAIN? The name says it all.

    Report Post »  
  • 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?.

    Report Post »  
    • 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.

      Report Post » Jack of Hearts  
  • 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!

    Report Post » Cold War Vet  
  • 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?

    Report Post » Cold War Vet  
  • Komponist-ZAH
    Posted on June 29, 2011 at 12:40am

    Where’s the “Report Post” button?

    Report Post »  
  • 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.

    Report Post » AmeriWoman  
    • Komponist-ZAH
      Posted on June 29, 2011 at 12:38am

      Whatever it takes to get the Gospel into people’s ears and hearts.

      Report Post »  

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