Sometime in early 1994, I was - as the kids said back then - browsing the de novo World Wide Web, visiting sites of gray background and bright blue links, all stacked neatly top to bottom with the occasional postage stamp image dropped in. For some reason, I was dropping in on museum pages from around the world, amazed at the evident death of geography in basic research. And I clicked on something labeled The Holy See. Accustomed as I was, through more than three decades of incense-tinged experience, to the ancient nature of church protocol, I figured this must be the site of some intrepid Catholic Web "designer" because it was pretty advanced for its day; heck, it had tables and a smooth white background! So I looked at the copyright tag, checked the domain registration, and found .... mirabile dictu! .... that this was the site of Pope John Paul II.
Poet, author, diarist, commentator, reader, writer. Karol Wojtyla of Poland was a blogger at heart. And his Papacy earned early adopter status amidst the cobwebs and Latin scrolls of the Church. Hidebound to tradition in many ways, progressive in many others, Pope John Paul II embraced new technology to the fullest, and used the Internet as a tool for evangelism from its earliest days of consumer adoption. Not only was he the most traveled Pope, he was the most wired Pope, and he understood the power of the worldwide network of digital information and opinion.
Very early on, the Church became a strong Internet player under John Paul II. It understood the intrinsic value of its vast collections of art and texts, and gradually made much of it available online - thereby drawing in Catholics and non-Catholics. Almost immediately, the Holy See created versions of its Website in many languages and was among the first major worldwide institutions to use database-and-object technology online to publish, moving quickly away from the flat html pages of the mid-90s.
Moreover, the Pope understood the power of networked communication, especially for the young. He pushed the Church to adopt technology, to open communications. Here's a quote from one official statement on World Communications Day (2002):
For the Church the new world of cyberspace is a summons to the great adventure of using its potential to proclaim the gospel message...I dare to summon the whole Church bravely to cross this new threshold, to put out deeply into the Net....
Note the humor in the pun. The Blogging Friar Jack calls John Paul "the most media-savvy pope ever." As late as last year, in failing health, he continued to urge the Church to invest in - and embrace - the Internet. Speaking to a group of French bishops, he commented:
Your conference and numerous dioceses have well understood the positive character of this change, proposing Internet sites directed especially to young people, where it is possible to be informed, to be formed, and to discover the different proposals of the Church. I cannot but encourage the development of these instruments to serve the Gospel and to promote dialogue and communication.
Modern technology has created the kind of death watch we all witnessed over the past few days. In most ways, it is useless and crude. But the spread of information - the more open Church - that John Paul II encouraged will not be reversed easily. Visit the Vatican online today and you'll find a vast and nearly complete database of his thoughts: homilies, speeches, letters, messages - a record of his Papacy online.
And that instinct toward transparency, remarkable for this Church, should be considered a major portion of the legacy of this blogging Pope.
UPDATE: CNN picks up on this story, which I'm pretty sure went from this blog, to Jarvis, and thereby to a much wider audience. No credit of course!
