Facebooking the Pope

Bess writes: You have a Friend request: His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI.
On the tail of the news that the Vatican is seeking, as Ruth Gledhill reports, to embrace  the internet fully to connect up interactively the billion members of the Roman Catholic Church, comes the latest Vatican initiative. A papal profile on Facebook.
“The Pope meets you on Facebook” is due to go live on May 24th, which is World Communications Day.  A new application, this will allow users to send and receive “virtual postcards” depicting the Pope and containing extracts from his speeches and other messages.
It’s all part of www.pope2you.net a new Vatican website, being developed by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. “The Pope has a great interest in these things” reports Archbishop Claudio Celli, head of the Council.
"The pope is inviting us to promote a culture of dialogue, of respect and friendship," especially among young people," he says, referring to the papal WCD message which refers to young Catholics as "the digital generation" and calls on them and any internet user in fact to use the web positively to build a "culture of respect, dialogue and friendship."  According to Beliefnet, the new site will also allow for users with to receive updates on the Pontiff and the Vatican through iPhone or Ipods including video and audio news braodcast in eight languages including Chinese.