A Vatican Information Services recap of Papal activity during the first six months of the year.

Related: Edward Pentin at the NCR(egister) profiles new Vatican spokesman Fr. Lombardi, SJ, with whom he worked at Vatican Radio:

In the 15 years he was program director, Father Lombardi was keen that the radio broadcast (known as the “grandmother” of all radio stations after it was founded in 1931 by radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi) keep abreast of all the technological advances in this information age.

Under his watch, the station embraced podcasting and the Internet (the Vatican Radio website is now one of the few in the world to publish pages in a multiplicity of alphanumeric languages).

In 2000, he helped launch the station’s live FM channel in the Rome area combining chat shows, live outside broadcasts and regular news bulletins. He oversaw the advent of satellite broadcasting and rebroadcasting of Vatican Radio programs by other stations — one of the radio’s fastest growing areas.

And, in the 1990s, he made sure Vatican Radio was one of the first stations in the world to adopt digital editing hardware, superseding even the BBC.

“We may not be first in every field but we are well-placed in terms of technology,” he told the Register late last year. “And this is part of our tradition, as our early association with Marconi testifies.”

Pope Benedict XVI probably hopes that Father Lombardi brings the same things to the Holy See Press Office. Just as he saw the station as a “content producer” rather than simply radio, it is expected that he will embrace all the means possible to effectively disseminate what happens in the universal Church to the world’s press.

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