Pope Benedict XVI gets e-mail address
New pope follows in John Paul's digital footsteps
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI had an Internet fan club even when he was cardinal. Now the Vatican has taken the logical next step by giving him a papal e-mail address.
The Holy See hasn’t said how many messages the pope has gotten, but if the late John Paul II’s experience with a multimedia ministry is any guide, the new leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics will have an inbox jammed with prayers, problems and pet peeves.
On Thursday, the Vatican said it was modifying its Web site so users who click on a “Greetings to the Holy Father” icon on the home page automatically activate an e-mail composer with his address in the send field.
The address for messages in English benedictxvi@vatican.va. There are also addresses for e-mails in Italian, Spanish, French, German and Portuguese.
I hope the Vatican has installed good spam filters, or else Pope Benedict's mailbox is going to be full of spam for Cialis, printer ink cartridges, and loan quotes. I wonder if the Cardinals will be emailing him the same forwarded emails that we get - "send this to 10 people in the next 10 minutes and you'll get an Outback Steakhouse gift certificate" (or a case of Coke, or get $1 million dollars from the lottery, etc etc etc)?
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