The Media-Savvy Pope

As I was surfing the internet the other day, I came across an article posted by ABC News on its website in April 2, 2005, about the late John Paul II and the heading goes like this: “Pope used media to his advantage: Media-Savvy John Paul II Got His Message Out Via Media and Technology”.

Pope John Paul II became a truly global figure, in part, because he knew how best to use the media -- whether it was television, radio or the Internet. In Poland, Mexico or America, wherever Pope John Paul II went, it became a media event, with all the pomp and circumstance of a royal wedding, all the hype of a Super Bowl, all the uproar of a rock concert. The combination of theology and technology made him the most media-savvy pope in history. John Paul II used technology to get his message out. Rather than railing against the press, as many public figures do, the pope used the media to deliver his message. John Paul II became pope in 1978, the same year instant global television first became available. Other popes, of course, in the past have used different kinds of communications but John Paul II was the first who fully understood that the church has a great opportunity to reach the entire world by using the mass media.

An estimated 1 billion people watched John Paul in 1987 when 23 satellites linked him to 16 countries in what was called "A Prayer for World Peace." Later that year, he took center stage at a Hollywood theater, holding a conversation via satellite with thousands of young Catholics in four cities. This pope also came out with a music video, featuring him singing and reciting psalms and the Gospels. He also recorded the rosary. He published best-selling books, and during John Paul's papacy, the Vatican went online, getting its own Web address.

It was John Paul II who approved some very rare, candid photo ops -- the pope on holiday, skiing, even wearing sneakers. In the early years of his papacy, the media credited John Paul II with helping bring about the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and broadcast his many messages condemning human rights abuses. Among his many accomplishments, Pope John Paul II will be remembered as a media-savvy pope who transformed the papacy and set the standard for his successor. ®