The Pope As YouTube Star

Whatever messages emanate from the Vatican these days will likely be streamed on YouTube in what is a landmark departure from the traditionally austere veil of selective communications that has characterized the Church’s practices. The stated reason Pope Benedict becomes a YouTube celebrity is an intention to broaden his reach and better control his image on the new channel, http://www.youtube.com/vatican.

I don’t doubt those intentions for a minute. Even religious leaders need broadband outlets these days – especially if they’re trying to plug into the estimated 1.4 billion Catholic faithful worldwide. The pontiff even tipped his papal hat to social networking sites Facebook and MySpace as ” a gift to humanity” for the friendship and understanding they foster.

Of course, the Pope plays politics like any other public figure with a big constituency. And it seems less than coincidental that the Vatican set itself up on YouTube during the same week that the White House did the same thing. Could be the Pope just wants to be as hip and cool as Barack Obama.

But the larger message here is the ubiquitous presence of the World Wide Web, and its potential to communicate everything from the absurd to the sublime. Queen Elizabth had her own YouTube channel two years ago, which simply demonstrates that even irrelevance has its place on the Internet.

Still, it’s intriguing that the Pope has gone public in this particular way. It won’t be too long before one of his Web sermons gets edited into a one of Don Navarro’s shticks from his Father Guido Sarducci days on “Saturday Night Live.” It’ll be interesting to see just how much of a blessing Pope Benedict thinks the new millenium media is then.