Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi breaks off from his rounds at the Vatican at least once a day to whip out his smartphone and shoot off a note to his followers: “Good morning, good people!” he tweets. The Vatican’s top culture man, “CardRavasi”, tweets snappy quotes from the Bible, famous philosophers and dons, or passes on details about art festivals.
The aim, he says, is to keep religion relevant for a younger generation. “The concise and pithy language of Twitter can teach religious communication a great deal,” Ravasi has said in interviews. His mission? To revitalise what faith means for “the children of television and the Internet”.
President of the Pontifical Council for Culture since 2007, Ravasi is keen to get priests, bishops and other cardinals to use Twitter, Internet blogs and social networking sites to bring to life the Bible’s wealth of stories. Humorous or serious, Ravasi’s tweets – much like the blog he writes for Italy’s Sole 24 Ore financial newspaper – often include words of support for the country’s disaffected youth, caught in the grip of an economic crisis.
He is not the only cardinal who is riding the Twitter wave. Brazilian Cardinal Odilo Scherer, American Sean Patrick O’Malley, Italian Angelo Scola and South African Wilfrid Fox Napier also tweet – out of 200 plus cardinals in the world many of whom might not be quite as tech-savvy.
Now they can hang out openly with all the underage whores they promote in their Biblical doctrines. Nothing to be ashamed of; they are only men wearing doilies, after all. Why should clergy wear a cloak of decency? I say we ought to celebrate the mass in spandex and thigh-high boots and be out with it.
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