Patron Saint of Technology
Posted on April 20, 2005
I feel as inadequate as ever attempting to intelligently discuss what I’m getting ready to discuss. The world has just watched a new pope being elected, Pope Benedict XVI. This has been an interesting process to observe and learn about, considering I have not actually given much thought to the pope at all until a few weeks ago.
Something I have learned is that Pope John Paul II was a fairly high tech pope. I Google’d several phrases and the one that returned the best results for what I was interested in was ‘tech pope’ and one article said the following:
VATICAN CITY: It took just minutes for the Vatican to alert the world’s media of Pope John Paul’s death — using text messages and email so the 2,000-year-old Church could meet the new demands of real-time news.
Just a quarter of an hour after the Pope was pronounced dead on Saturday at 9:37 p.m. (1937 GMT), the Vatican sent journalists an SMS message alerting them to a pending statement.
Television networks across the globe were already on standby a minute later when the email communique was beamed to a sea of state-of-the-art handheld computers, purchased by journalists at the suggestion of the Vatican.
“”The Holy father died this evening at 21:37 in his private apartment,”" it said, in a simple Word document.
TV spectators across the globe learned of the Pope’s death even before the thousands of faithful gathered in prayer below the Pope’s window in St. Peter’s Square.
Archbishop Leonardo Sandri only informed them minutes later and their reaction — a long round of applause, an Italian custom — was captured on television in real time.
Wow! That is amazing that the Vatican sent a text message out alerting the media of an upcoming message, then the announcement of the Pope’s death was sent out in an e-mail in an attached Word document.
Another good article is here. This article points out:
John Paul II also played a role in bringing the Vatican into the Information Age.
I wasn’t on this list, but John Paul II did send out a daily papal message to Verizon cell phone customers who chose to receive it. Talk about cutting edge, how many churches do you know that are doing that?
Now, this last point, from the same article is the most obscure to me but that’s due to my lack of understanding in these type of things.
Under John Paul II’s leadership, the Vatican has also moved forward with plans to name St. Isidore of Seville, known for his scholarly work, as the patron saint of computer users, computer technicians and the Internet.
So, the Vatican is in the process of naming this dude, that lived back around 500a.d., patron saint of computer users, computer technicians and the Internet. That’s pretty cool, although I don’t fully understand the relationship since none of that stuff was around when this guy was alive. There is significance there and I would like to better understand it. The little bit I have just read of him describes the massive amount of writing that he did on a variety of subjects. This page has sort of a bio on him and if you search around a little bit, you can find out more about his work. But, as I implied earlier, my ignorance on all of this far surpasses any knowledge I have, so I am just throwing out some info without trying to add anything to it.
Honestly, I never viewed the Catholic church as being very technologically savvy, but I can see I was wrong about that. My eyes have been opened and I wouldn’t mind learning more about how the Catholic church is using technology at all level’s of their church.
By Google’ing ‘tech pope’, I actually got more results stating that John Paul II was a low-tech pope. He didn’t like cell phones or computers and did not use them. He did, however, realize the value in them and stated the way to reach the younger crowd was through this type of media.
It will be interesting to see what Pope Benedict XVI’s view is on technology in the church.
I know our theology differs, however I do agree with the following statement by the late Pope, when he stated:
…the Church should not be shy of using the media, including the Internet, to spread its message.”"
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