The Pope Goes High-Tech to Extend Reach Into Cyberspace

Pope John Paul II, who has traveled to more countries and met more Catholics than all his predecessors combined, is about to extend his reach into cyberspace.

Starting Saturday, the pope is going live on the Internet. Sound and video of his public appearances will be available in real time to just about anyone with a computer hooked up to a telephone.

This new feature of the Vatican’s World Wide Web site is the media-savvy pope’s latest use of digital-age tools to spread his message and boost his authority. It will make one of the world’s best-known public figures even more available to his 1-billion-strong flock, admirers of other faiths and Vatican watchers who track his influence and his fading health.

The 78-year-old pontiff will now be able “to reach people no matter where they are,” said Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, who runs the Vatican administration and its Internet Office. The Internet appearances, he said, will be “an extension of John Paul’s pastoral visits” to more than 100 countries.

Viewers can tune in by going to the Web site at https://www.vatican.va/ and downloading free software to start the live transmissions from Vatican Radio and the Vatican Television Center.

Msgr. Ugo Moretti, director of Vatican television, said the site will transmit about 140 events a year, including the pope’s Angelus prayer each Sunday, his weekly Wednesday audiences and occasional Masses in St. Peter’s Basilica.

The weekend start-up features the pope’s celebration of the Roman Catholic Feast of the Assumption--transmitted from Castel Gandolfo, his summer residence.

Most of these events will start at noon Vatican time; viewers in California will have to log on at 3 a.m. to see them. Latecomers will be able to download the pope’s words and “a few frames” of video, Moretti said. There’s no facility yet for translation from Italian, but Vatican Radio’s separate Web site carries the same audio message in English and 38 other languages.

“For Catholics in the United States, this is an opportunity to see the Holy Father more than just at Christmas and Easter” on television, said David Early, a spokesman for the U.S. Catholic Conference in Washington. “This makes the connection with the universal church a little more tangible.”

More important, he said, it should make John Paul accessible to some Catholics in such countries as China and Cuba, where both the church and satellite television are restricted.

But some Catholics worry that worshipers could eventually use the new technology as a substitute for going to Mass. Others, citing what Australian priest Paul Collins calls “the omnipresent papacy,” say it can only enhance John Paul’s superstar status and his capacity to impose his conservative agenda on a divided flock.

“The church has to take advantage of all technologies to spread the good news,” countered papal spokesman Ciro Benedettini. “And the one who spreads this good news is the pope.”

The Vatican Web site has improved since its false start on Christmas Day 1995, when the pope fell ill and computers were overwhelmed by electronic get-well wishes. The site reopened Easter Sunday 1997 with increased computer capacity but without the popular papal e-mail address. It gets 7 million visits a month from 50 countries, the Vatican says.

By 2000, the site aims to offer an electronic archive containing all official utterances of the 20th century’s nine popes. To prevent tampering with papal teachings, Benedettini said, Vatican experts have built “all the necessary firewalls” to protect their 11 computers from hackers.