Vatican City, May 1, 2011 / 19:43 pm
The Vatican hopes to harness the power of bloggers in order to “further the Christian message” at a May 2 conference.
The event is being hosted by the Pontifical Council for Culture. One of their key organizers is Richard Rouse. He told CNA that convention is not, as some bloggers have suggested, a Vatican attempt to centralize, command or control.
“No, there's no way we can control the blogosphere. Actually what we can do is we can harness some of its great power and dynamism in order to further the Christian message, the Gospel message, and it's important we do that.”
When the idea of a Catholic bloggers convention was first floated earlier this year it instantly attracted a great deal of online attention. Over 750 individuals applied to attend. Through a lottery, the number was whittled down to 150.