Pope plans to reach youth with Facebook profile and website

Rome, Italy, May 20, 2009 / 10:06 am

The president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, announced on Thursday the launching of a new website, pope2you.net, to reach out to young people and bring them into contact with Pope Benedict XVI.

The archbishop told L’Osservatore Romano that the initiative is part of the activities surrounding World Communications Day, which will be celebrated on Sunday, May 24 under the theme, “New Technologies, New Relationships.”

The idea behind this website, the archbishop said, “is that in order to be able to enter into a fruitful, rich dialogue characterized by respect and friendship, we wanted to use the digital world, that is, the instrument most friendly to young people, through which they encounter each other daily and often without meeting each other in person.”

Commenting on Pope Benedict XVI's call to young people to use the internet to evangelize, Archbishop Celli said the Holy Father was encouraging them to participate in online social networks and “bear witness to the love of God for all mankind.”

The archbishop also said the new site would be directly linked to Facebook from which users will be able to send pictures of the Pontiff and excerpts from his discourses to their friends.

“The presence of the Pope on Facebook is limited to this, to the possibility of sending a picture of him with an excerpt from his teaching,” Archbishop Celli noted.

The new website will be in five languages: Italian, Spanish, English, French and German. Young people will be able to access “not only all news referring to the Pope and his activities, but also they will be able to enter into contact with the person of Benedict XVI through his words,” he said.