Vatican.va
.svg) Coat of arms of the Holy See, the favicon of the website | |
Screenshot  Screenshot of home page on 25 April 2025 | |
Type of site | Religion |
|---|---|
| Available in |
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| Country of origin | Vatican City |
| URL | www |
| Launched | 25 December 1995 |
Vatican.va is the official website of the Holy See, launched on 25 December 1995. The website serves as the online access point for the papacy and hosts official documents. Conceived by Franciscan sister Judith Zoebelein, Archbishop John Patrick Foley, and the press office director Joaquín Navarro-Valls, Vatican.va has been maintained and developed by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications (PCSC) since its inception.
Description
[edit]Vatican.va is managed by the PCSC,[1] which regularly updates the website's layout and contents to keep up with the latest technology. The website, which serves "as the access point for information about the pope and the Curial offices,"[2] features full texts of official documents of the Holy See, including letters, encyclicals, constitutions, and exhortations.[3] The website is provided in nine languages:[4] English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian,[3] Latin,[5] Chinese,[6] and Arabic,[7] although not all documents on the website are fully translated.[8] The website also hosts the entire text of the Nova Vulgata, the Church's current authorized Latin translation of the Bible.[9] The background texture of the website resembles parchment paper,[1] "which was chosen perhaps to symbolize the Church's ancient history."[10]
History
[edit]As the Roman Curia began adopting computers and other offline technology in the late 1980s, the idea for establishing an Intranet of ecclesiastical documents took hold. Led by the PCSC, the initial plan was to have Bayard Presse run a database first in Latin America called La Red Informática de la Iglesia en América Latina (RIIAL) and then spread to other countries with content provided in their respective languages. However the idea was scrapped due to high costs and the cheaper prospect of the then-emerging Internet.[11] Pope John Paul II himself issued "The Christian Message in a Computer Culture" in 1990, the first Papal document on the role of computer technology, which gave guidance on the purpose of digital communication by the Church. Archbishop John Patrick Foley, appointed president of the PCSC by the pope in 1984,[12] would thus develop the Vatican website on the remains of RIIAL and with the pope's message in mind. Foley would also see to the granting of the .va top-level domain in September 1995, which was to be used on all official URLs of the Holy See.[13]
In 1991, Cardinal Rosalio Castillo Lara enlisted American Franciscan sister Judith Zoebelein to direct computer installations in the Vatican.[14][15] Zoebelein, along with Foley and press office director Joaquín Navarro-Valls formulated the idea for the Vatican website in 1994.[13] Despite initial hesitance among some key members of the Vatican, Navarro-Valls successfully pitched the idea of a Vatican website to the pope.[14] Vatican.va was thereafter launched on Christmas Day, 1995.[16] The site was very simple in the beginning with only an email address, an image of John Paul II, and the text of his Urbi et Orbi of that Christmas. Nevertheless, it attracted at least 300,000 people from 70 countries in its first 48 hours.[17][18] It is difficult to tell the subsequent history of the website between its launch and its revamp on March 1997, the latter date being the first version of the website archived by the Wayback Machine on 30 January 1998.[19] During the final year of this period, the website was temporarily suspended in preparation of the major revamp released on 27 March 1997.[18] In this new revision, the website would now include more than 1200 texts by Popes Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II in six languages.[20][21] 200 email addresses of the .va domain were also introduced for communication with and within the Holy See.[20]
From 2000 to 2005, Vatican.va was thoroughly updated to include new menus, tens of thousands of documents, and a search engine, in addition to at least 1,000 email addresses associated with the website by late 2004.[20] The website in 2001 had sections for "Holy Father, the Roman Curia, News Services, the Library and Secret Archives, the Vatican City State, the Vatican Museums, and the Archive."[3] Under Pope Benedict XVI, who succeeded John Paul II in 2005, the website was made available in Latin in 2008 as a part of Benedict's promotion of the language.[5] By 2014, the website had been again updated with new features, among them a Twitter feed of the new pope, Francis.[1]
Reception
[edit]In his 2006 study, Todd S. Frobish expresses some concern that the Vatican may not fully "appreciate" the capacity of the website to attract new followers, writing "[t]he site could have done more here to persuade users to see the site not as the total experience of Catholicism, but as a beginning."[22] The sociologist of religion Andrew P. Lynch assessed in 2015 that the website overall reflected the structure of the Church itself, emphasizing top-down messaging rather than dialogue between clergy and laity. Nonetheless, he determined that the website does still attest to the Church's willingness to engage with its members in the modern world.[23]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c Lynch 2015, p. 105.
- ^ Lynch 2015, p. 106.
- ^ a b c Gunn 2001, p. 78.
- ^ Lynch 2015, p. 108.
- ^ a b "Vatican puts Latin online". France 24. 9 May 2008. Archived from the original on 17 February 2011. Retrieved 24 April 2025.
- ^ "Pope announces inclusion of Chinese in general audiences". Zenit News Agency. 24 November 2024. Archived from the original on 12 April 2025. Retrieved 24 April 2025.
- ^ "Vatican website now available in Arabic". Vatican Radio. 24 May 2014. Archived from the original on 5 July 2024. Retrieved 24 April 2025.
- ^ Gunn 2001, p. 79.
- ^ Houghton, H. A. G. (2016). The Latin New Testament: A Guide to Its Early History, Texts, and Manuscripts. Oxford University Press. p. 133. ISBN 978-0-19-874473-3.
- ^ Frobish 2006, p. 47.
- ^ de Vaujany 2007, pp. 755–757.
- ^ Kloch 2021, pp. 105–106.
- ^ a b Kloch 2021, p. 113.
- ^ a b "25 years ago, a Franciscan sister installed internet in the Vatican". Aleteia. 23 January 2021. Archived from the original on 8 September 2024. Retrieved 24 April 2025.
- ^ de Vaujany 2007, p. 756.
- ^ Ruffini, Paolo (24 December 2020). "Vatican.va at 25: A small seed has grown into a guardian of memory". Vatican News. Archived from the original on 23 August 2024. Retrieved 24 April 2025.
- ^ Kloch 2021, p. 115.
- ^ a b de Vaujany 2007, p. 757.
- ^ Kloch 2021, pp. 116–117.
- ^ a b c Kloch 2021, pp. 117.
- ^ de Vaujany 2007, p. 758.
- ^ Frobish 2006, p. 65-66.
- ^ Lynch 2015, p. 110.
Bibliography
[edit]- Frobish, Todd S. (1 April 2006). "The Virtual Vatican: A Case Study Regarding Online Ethos". The Journal of Communication and Religion. 29 (1): 38–69. doi:10.5840/jcr20062913.
- Gunn, Kevin B. (24 September 2001). "Canon Law Resources on the Internet". Journal of Religious & Theological Information. 4 (1): 71–89. doi:10.1300/J112v04n01_07. ISSN 1047-7845.
- Kloch, Józef (31 March 2021). "The Process of Creating a Digital Communication Model for the Vatican". The Person and the Challenges. The Journal of Theology, Education, Canon Law and Social Studies Inspired by Pope John Paul II. 11 (1): 103–121. doi:10.15633/pch.3887. ISSN 2391-6559.
- Lynch, Andrew P. (1 January 2015). "Digital Catholicism: Internet, the Church, and the Vatican Website". Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Vol. 6. Brill. pp. 97–113. doi:10.1163/9789004302549_008. ISBN 978-90-04-30254-9. Retrieved 24 April 2025.
- de Vaujany, François-Xavier (1 April 2007). "Between Eternity and Actualization: The Difficult Co-Evolution of Fields of Communication in the Vatican". Communications of the Association for Information Systems. 18 (1). doi:10.17705/1CAIS.01836. ISSN 1529-3181.
