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Pope blesses social networking

by on26 January 2012



Blessed are the friend makers and those who poke choirboys


Pope Benedict XVI has given a papal blessing (forty euros from registered Roman souvenir shops) to social notworking sites saying that they can help people find answers to life.

"Search engines and social networks have become the starting point of communication for many people who are seeking advice, ideas, information and answers," he said.

He might be right, after all my Facebook friends can come up with more practical answers to issues like sex abuse, contraception, and female priests than anything I have seen coming out of the Vatican. However the Pontiff urges relentless chatter to be balanced with silence.  We find that silence, while useful can be a little tricky on Facebook, particularly if someone is waiting for a reply.  We take it that he means that you have to be quiet when you type and not thump the keyboard too hard.

Not that Pope Benedict uses a keyboard. He is an Apple fanboy so he has a touch screen, but we welcome the aged pontiff to the 21s century, we wonder how he knows so much about Facebook. The only thing we can think of is that he goes about incognito, which is Latin for pretending to be someone else. It is possible that I have friended him, I have a lot of loonies on my list.

Anyway he seems to like Twitter. "In concise phrases, often no longer than a verse from the Bible, profound thoughts can be communicated, as long as those taking part in the conversation do not neglect to cultivate their own inner lives," he said.

Pope Benedict recently gave his  blessing to an iPhone app that lets believers keep track of their sins. We tried it but the iPhone app told us it was a sin to hate Apple and sticking pins in a wax doll of Steve Jobs could get us burnt at the stake.

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