Vatican invites bloggers to first-ever summit

Monks, priests, nuns and lay bloggers hunched over their iPads and tweeted updates to their followers as the Vatican told them of its desire to get to know them better and establish a genuine relationship.

The Vatican invited 150 bloggers from around the world to a first-ever blogging summit, increasingly aware of the important role faith-based blogging is playing in spreading Catholicism. The Vatican has been seeking to engage more with the online world: For the beatification of Pope John Paul II, the Vatican created a special Facebook page, Twitter account, ran clips of his 27-year pontificate on its YouTube channel and let the faithful send electronic postcards to one another about what they were experiencing via its youth-based news portal. The Catholic blogging community is as diverse as Roman Catholicism, with a range of views and topics: Some people blog about spirituality, others take a more political tone about the direction of the church, others share information about liturgical questions.