Opinion: Hits for His Holiness

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Not for the first time, the Catholic Church is trying to adapt its message to contemporary culture. Pope Benedict XVI has become what Reuters calls ‘one of the oldest people to have his own YouTube channel.’

The site, www.youtube.com/vaticanit, features clips from the pontiff’s activities, with versions in English, Spanish, German and Italian (though when I clicked on the English link I still got Italian). No word about whether His Holiness also will have a Facebook page or invite cardinals to join him on LinkedIn.

If the pope wants to amass an impressive YouTube subscriber list, I’d suggest he capitalize on his well-known fondness for cats, most famously reflected in an authorized biography of Benedict credited to the cat Chico. Several YouTube channels are devoted to man’s second best friend. The pope could follow suit with clips showing him feeding the famous feral cats in the Coliseum, talking to cats in German and secreting a kitten in his miter.

If cats don’t drive up the traffic for the pope’s channel, Benedict might consider clips of the baptisms of funny babies or mirthful mishaps at Mass.