The Pope’s Coming to YouTube

The Vatican has announced its partnering with Google to being Vatican television and Vatican Radio to the Internet, with a little help from Google.

The Vatican has announced that is collaborating with Internet giant Google on a project to bring Vatican TV Center and Vatican Radio to the Internet—and part of the deal will apparently include Pope Benedict XVI getting his own YouTube channel.

The Vatican says it will announce details at a news conference January 23rd, which will be presented by officials of the Holy See as well as Henrique de Castro, Gogole’s managing director of media relations.

The Vatican has been embracing the Internet with surprising alacrity for such a large and conservative instutition, launching the Vatican Web site under the auspices of Pope John Paul II in 1995. However, bringing Vatican TV and Radio to the Internet will mark the Vatican’s biggest move into new media…and makes one wonder if Vatican officials and content producers are ready for the rough-and-tumble world of social media…or whether, say, the Holy See plans to offer a line of indulgences for, say, spamming, downloading from file sharing networks, or posting copyrighted content.