Vatican’s news website gets up to 10,000 hits a day

The Vatican’s news website is getting between 8,000 and 10,000 hits a day with peaks of up to 16,000 hits over Christmas, the head of the Holy See’s social media department said.

The website, which brings together all the Vatican’s official communications and news from the Catholic Church around the world, was launched in June last year.

The data was announced by Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications at a Vatican press conference.

Archbishop Celli said most of the visits to the website were through social media networks – with 65 per cent from Facebook and 30 per cent from Twitter.