Vatican officials and Catholic bishops are getting a lesson on the Internet from Facebook, Wikipedia and Google executives as the church struggles to get its message out in the digital age. A four-day symposium in the Vatican which opened Thursday also will address Internet copyright issues and hacking _ including testimony from a young Swiss hacker and an Interpol cyber-crime official. The meeting is being hosted by the European bishop's media commission and is designed to delve into questions about what Internet culture means for the church's mission and how the church communicates that mission to others. Pope Benedict XVI has tried to bring the Vatican into the Internet age and launched a YouTube channel earlier this year. Officials say he also e-mails and surfs the Web. But the Vatican's online shortcomings have been woefully apparent. Earlier this year, Benedict made clear he was disappointed that Vatican officials hadn't done a simple Internet search to discover the Holocaust-denying comments of an ultraconservative bishop before the pontiff lifted his excommunication. The outrage over the rehabilitation of Bishop Richard Williamson, of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, prompted Benedict to write a letter to his bishops admitting mistakes and saying that he had "learned the lesson" and that the Vatican would in the future pay greater attention to the Internet as a source of news. French Bishop Jean-Michel di Falco Leandri, president of the European Episcopal Conference's media committee, cited the Williamson affair in his remarks to the opening session, saying it exposed the institutional church's communications problems. He also cited the outcry over the pope's own controversial comments that condoms are not the answer to Africa's AIDS epidemic and could make it worse. He said the Catholic Church must learn how to communicate in a more effective, instantaneous way _ recognizing how its pronouncements are taken in different cultures _ if it wants to engage the faithful to spread its mission. Continued... |