Friday, January 23, 2009

Vatican reveals Pope's YouTube channel
Agence France-
VATICAN CITY--The Vatican will publish a report on Friday detailing the launch of Pope Benedict XVI's own dedicated channel on YouTube, the Osservatore Romano newspaper said.

The deal with search engine giant Google, which owns the video sharing website, aims to "secure the Pope's presence on the web," the Vatican paper said Thursday, adding that Benedict has always had been "fond of new technologies."

The report will be published when the German-born pontiff will officially launch his YouTube channel.

Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, head of the Vatican's communications department, told the paper the pope hopes to reach out to "the digital generation.
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Reports: Pope to lift excommunications
VATICAN CITY – Two newspapers say Pope Benedict XVI has decided to lift the excommunications of four bishops consecrated 20 years ago by the late French ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

Lefebvre rebelled against the Vatican's modernizing reforms of the 1960s, including replacing Latin with local languages at Mass.

Benedict has already reached out to the rebels in the hopes of bringing them back into the Church by making it the old Mass more readily available.

The Italian newspapers Il Giornale and Il Riformista said Thursday that Benedict has now decided to meet their demand that the excommunications be lifted. The newspapers said, without citing sources, that Benedict has already signed the decrees and that they will be made public soon.

The Vatican declined comment on the reports.

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