Pontifical tweeting and embracing social media

“Dear Friends, I just launched News.va. Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI.”

This first ever pontifical tweet was made on June 28. Thousands of Twitter users retweeted the Pope. By July 1, 65,000 sent a reply.

Thanks to the Pope the Vatican’s site registered an increase of almost 54,000 hits from the period before the Pope’s message. Twitter allows users to broadcast short messages of 140 characters called tweets.

Most probably this was a one off and the Pope will not tweet about his myriad activities. Ahead of the launch, Fr Federico Lombardi said that the Pope’s tweet will be “a simple but powerful and symbolic action.” It was a good push to the Vatican’s first multimedia news portal News.va, which allows readers to view all of the Vatican’s media in one place. The website integrates with social networks. Its design is geared towards mobile devices such as Apple’s iPad. The site is worth a visit.

The ‘need’ felt by the Vatican’s media people to ask the Pope to tweet begs for two different types of comments.

The first has to do with the Church’s media usage. The Church has oscillated from looking at the media as the modern version of the original sin to considering them as a modern means of salvation. Both views are simplistic.

Fortunately, modern Church documents on the subject go beyond this futile distinction but unfortunately these stereotypes are still present among ecclesiastics.

The post divorce referendum traumatised Malta Church is passing through a phase where the media is looked upon as the ‘Mother of all Culprits’. The referendum result is naively attributed to negative media coverage. This is just part of the alienation comforting those ecclesiastics who are still in denial.

It would be much better for the Church to move on and creatively organise its media apostolate. The people running the relevant secretariat are willing and enthusiastic. However, the resources provided are limited and the vast majority of the recommendations made in the Church media policy document – Il-Wiċċ Digitali tal-Mulej – have not been acted on. Its vision is totally out of synch with the current ecclesiastical vision of the media. The document is now just a passé dead letter.

My second comment touches the nature in the digital world. Pope Benedict had addressed the subject in his message for the 45th World Day of Social Communications, which was celebrated on June 5 and had as its theme: ‘Truth, Proclamation and Authenticity of Life in the Digital Age’.

One of its key paragraphs reads: “The new technologies allow people to meet each other beyond the confines of space and of their own culture, creating in this way an entirely new world of potential friendships. This is a great opportunity, but it also requires greater attention to and awareness of possible risks.

“Who is my ‘neighbour’ in this new world? Does the danger exist that we may be less present to those whom we encounter in our everyday life? Is there is a risk of being more distracted because our attention is fragmented and absorbed in a world ‘other’ than the one in which we live?

“Do we have time to reflect critically on our choices and to foster human relationships which are truly deep and lasting? It is important always to remember that virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives”.

The answer to these questions is of vital importance for all of us. In this world, inundated by easily accessible means of communication, can we say that we are communicating more intensely and humanly?

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt