VATICAN CITY: Now the pope is trying to broaden his audience by joining the wannabe musicians, college pranksters and water-skiing squirrels on YouTube.
Pope Benedict XVI welcomed viewers of YouTube, in his inaugural foray Friday.
The 81-year-old pope has been extremely wary of new media, warning about what he has called the tendency of entertainment media, in particular, to trivialize sex and promote violence.
“Today is a day that writes a new page in history for the Holy See,” Vatican Radio said in describing the launch of the site, http://www.youtube.com/vatican
The Vatican said that with the YouTube channel, it hoped to broaden and unite the pontiff’s audience – an estimated 1.4 billion people are online worldwide – while giving the Holy See better control over the pope’s Internet image.
The pontiff joins President Barach Obama, who launched an official White House channel on his inauguration day, as well as Queen Elizabeth, who went online with her royal YouTube channel in December 2007.
