Catholic community ‘likes’ News.va

THE new Vatican website News.va is already making a name for itself: After only a few hours of going live, the site already had more than 3,000 “friends” on Facebook and over 36,000 people following it on Twitter.

Pope Benedict issued the first tweet June 28. The site went live officially June 29.

The site brings together all the Vatican’s communication outlets into one online location for the first time. The list of agencies includes Fides News Agency, the newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, the Holy See’s Press Office, the Vatican Information Service, Vatican Radio and the Vatican television service, CTV. Each will also retain their own independent websites.

“The new portal is giving you the possibility of having a direct, immediate approach to the most important pieces of news from the Holy See,” said the president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Archbishop Claudio Celli, in his first interview with Vatican Radio on the new website.

The new site also has a multimedia format, offering live-streaming of papal events, photographs from L’Osservatore Romano, audio from Vatican Radio and video footage that will also be available on the Vatican’s YouTube channel. It also links to other social communication sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

Initially only two languages will be offered, Italian and English, but that could soon change.

Report from National Catholic Register