Guy Dinmore looks at the portal behind the Pope?s first tweet

Dressed in full papal regalia, Pope Benedict XVI pressed the ?send? button on his iPad, entering the history books as the first pontiff to dispatch a ?tweet? with the formal launch this week of the Vatican?s news portal.

?I should say ?tablet? really as the Vatican doesn?t do advertising,? jokes Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, the church?s jovial minister of messages or as his more formal title describes him, president of the Pontifical Council of Social Communications.

Indeed the absence of commercial advertising and a search function on News.va are perhaps the main features that distinguish it from other news hubs as the Vatican embraces modern media tools – with links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr – to get its message across to a wider audience.

?Benedict XVI is very positive towards new technologies,? says Monsignor Celli of a pope who likes to write out his speeches by hand but agreed to use an iPad rather than an ?old computer? to launch the portal.

?Benedict compared to his predecessor is not a media pope,? admits the 70-year-old archbishop. ?John Paul was a master of communications but Benedict is nonetheless very attentive to establishing a dialogue with the people of today.?

Europe?s oldest institution adopting the latest in media technology is perhaps another example of what Monsignor Celli sees as a modern world rich in contradictions. ?The world has sophisticated instruments of communication but man has never been so lonely as today. The great suffering of today is loneliness,? he argues. ?Galloping secularisation and more rigid relativism is fragmenting life . . . With this portal, the church wants to offer the possibility of a respectful dialogue.?

But are there potential pitfalls to high-tech interaction given the recent scandals relating to paedophile and Holocaust-denying priests that have dogged Benedict?s papacy? And is there a danger that the Vatican will be exposed as a secretive and slow-to-respond institution? The church is ready to face criticism, he replies. ?Yes there are risks of being offended, attacked, criticised, but we have to confront this . . . Every face has its wrinkles. The church has its limits but doesn?t use make-up.?

Asked for a peek at the newsroom where decisions are made on the day?s top stories, he demurs and says that is not possible.

The news portal as explained by Thaddeus Jones, its youthful American project co-ordinator, is intended to be ?not too busy, multimedia rich, social media friendly and of easy-to-use appearance?. It was developed with a Madrid-based media company, 101, and acts as an aggregator of news from the Vatican?s extensive network, including Radio Vatican, Fides news agency, the Osservatore Romano news-paper, with footage and archives from Vatican television.

In its first full day of operation following the papal tweet – ?Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI? – the site registered some 250,000 hits. Topping the ?most read? list was Benedict?s reflections on the ?most important moment of my life?, when he was ordained 60 years ago.

Despite the successful debut, Andrea Gagliarducci, a freelance Catholic reporter, is sceptical that a new era of transparency is dawning. ?It?s an old generation that tries to be young,? he says.

Monsignor Celli admits that new technology will not always translate into speed of communication. ?Sometimes it is true we are slow, but we are not selling commercial products,? he says. ?We are offering a deep reflection on the problems of people. Often these issues do not have an immediate response. I confess I am afraid of a church that has an instant response for everything.?

And with that, the archbishop asks to be excused as he has to change into his robes for an offline ceremony of a more traditional nature.

? The Financial Times Limited 2011