Pope Benedict XVI entered the world of social media and sent his first tweet via his iPad on Tuesday.
"Dear Friends, I just launched www.news.va. Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI," wrote the 84-year-old while watched by Vatican officials and the media.
The Pope used his Twitter account to annouce the Vatican’s latest project - an interactive multi-media website, which includes Twitter updates, YouTube videos, Flickr photos and Facebook links.
Bruno Bartoloni, a Vatican expert said the Church's embrace of social media was also a way to bypass traditional and more critical media to deliver information directly.
"The paedophilia scandals of recent years have shocked the Church and have encouraged it to abandon the language of tradition," he said.
"The Church understands that its reasoning is often badly understood, with traditional media choosing to underline colourful aspects or criticism, or simplifying messages that are in essence complex," he added.
The latest multimedia efforts by the Vatican are part of a bigger drive announced by the Pontiff last year in his keynote message at the Church's World Communications Day, where he urged priests to make "astute use of the unique possibilities offered by modern communications."
The Christian message "can traverse the many crossroads created by the intersection of all the different 'highways' that form cyberspace and show that God has his rightful place in every age, including our own," he argued.