The Vatican has launched its new multimedia communications website, centralising all of its media operations.
Vatican spokesman Greg Burke announced ahead of the beta form launch that vaticannews.va and the accompanying production centre were simply the “first visible and concrete expression” of the unified approach to communications the Pope and his cardinal advisers had requested,
The announcement came the day after Msgr Dario Vigano, prefect of the Holy See’s Secretariat for Communication, presented the site to Pope Francis and his Council of Cardinal Advisers, explaining the progress made in unifying the various Vatican media.
He said: “The cornerstone of the system, fruit of a process of consolidation on an economic and technical level, is represented by the Editorial Multimedia Centre,” a single structure responsible for producing audio, text, video and graphics in several languages and for use on a variety of platforms, including the new website and social media.
The Secretariat for Communication’s editorial board will determine how various events and issues are presented and covered.
Eventually the multimedia centre will include about 350 employees drawn from the 40 language programmes of the former Vatican Radio and from the nine institutions, the radio, Vatican newspaper, Vatican television production centre, Vatican printing press and more, that now form part of the secretariat.
The multimedia centre will begin its work with 70 people working in six languages: Italian, English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese. They will focus on four areas: the Pope, the Vatican, the Church and the world.