First there was Vatican II, now there's Vatican 2.0.
Today the Roman Catholic Church will expand its presence in cyberspace when Pope Benedict XVI launches the Vatican's own channel on YouTube.
The church will join the ranks of other influential international institutions that already have carved out a niche of followers on YouTube, including the White House, Buckingham Palace and the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Pope will use the site to post daily news clips, videos of his speeches and other ceremonies from the Vatican, with audio and text in four languages: English, Spanish, German and Italian. The channel is due to go online today during a news conference in the press room of the Holy See in Rome.
"It certainly shows that the church recognizes the value of YouTube and making itself as accessible as widely as possible using whatever means possible," said Rev. John Pungente, an ordained Catholic priest and executive director of the Jesuit Communication Project in Toronto.
"It shows we're not stuck back in the Middle Ages, chanting somewhere. Just as we have used radio and television to spread the word about the church, now we should certainly be using something like YouTube on the Internet."
Father Pungente also suggested the Vatican should consider getting a Facebook page or an account with the micro-blogging site Twitter.
In fact, an unofficial Facebook fan page for the Pope has more than 25,000 followers, while there are three Twitter accounts purporting to belong to the Pope. Officials in Vatican City could not be reached to comment on whether the page and accounts are genuine.
"The Vatican is the first ever global religious institution to get a channel on YouTube, and we hope that other religious organizations will follow suit," said Tamara Micner, a spokeswoman for YouTube's parent company, Google Inc.
"We would be delighted to see more such channels crop up in the future. This channel affirms that YouTube has become a platform for people to explore and express their religion, spirituality and their faith online."
The launch of the Vatican's new YouTube channel is part of the church's annual Catholic Church World Social Communication Day, and this year's theme is "new technologies in social communication."
Pope John Paul II took the Vatican online with the launch of an official website in 1995, which he used to publish teachings, pronouncements and other news. The website for Vatican Radio regularly broadcasts audio in 40 languages and produces a number of podcasts.
YouTube has grown to become the largest online repository for videos since launching in February, 2005. More than 10 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute.
The White House got its own YouTube channel in 2006, according to the YouTube website.
The Queen launched her YouTube channel on Christmas Day in 2007, exactly 50 years after her first televised Christmas broadcast. The channel received more than one million hits in its first week.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's YouTube channel launched on Dec. 22, 2006, and features 129 videos, receiving more than 22,000 page views to date.
