Pope Benedict XVI issued a surprising proclamation this week urging priests to use social media to spread the Gospel. In anticipation of World Communications Day, the pope, who has confessed to being Web-illiterate in the past, told priests to "give a soul" to the Internet using the latest "audiovisual resources," including blogs, Facebook, and yes—Twitter. What can priests accomplish by boiling down God's word to 140 characters or less? (Watch a report about the Pope's social media backing)
The Vatican's making lemons into lemonade: This is exciting, says Don Clemmer at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops media blog. The pope is telling priests to start blogging to turn the Internet, which is now a swamp of "toxic exchanges" and "namecalling," into a tool to "lovingly bridge division between people." That's "almost radical," but it makes sense—priests need to be where people are, and these days they're online.
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