Agence France-Presse

VATICAN CITY–The Vatican will publish a report on Friday detailing the launch of Pope Benedict XVI’s own dedicated channel on YouTube, the Osservatore Romano newspaper said.

The deal with search engine giant Google, which owns the video sharing website, aims to “secure the Pope’s presence on the web,” the Vatican paper said Thursday, adding that Benedict has always had been “fond of new technologies.”

The report will be published when the German-born pontiff will officially launch his YouTube channel.

Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, head of the Vatican’s communications department, told the paper the pope hopes to reach out to “the digital generation.”

FILIPINOS are observing the Holy Week and that means a long holiday for most people, except for us journalists and bloggers, heh

Here are a couple of interesting blog entries about Holy Week in the Philippines.

Bob Martin of the Mindanao.com Blog has this to say:

[Read the rest of this entry »]

AS Catholics all over the world observe Holy Week, Bo Sanchez is not only fasting, but also blogging to encourage others to pray and fast this Lenten season.

Here’s an excerpt from his fasting journal:

I’m writing my fasting journal to you, to encourage you in your own prayer & fasting this Holy Week. This is my second day of 7 days of prayer & fasting.

This year, I’m taking a lighter—but healthier—type of fast: The Juice fast. (I did a “water only” fast years ago and I loved it, but I think it was too harsh for the body. In a “water only” fast, toxins are released too quickly and it shocks the system. In a juice fast, the toxins bind themselves with the juices and they get gently flushed out of the body.)

This year, I was a good boy and prepared for my fast well. About 3 days before my fast, I began eating smaller meals and avoided refined sugar—ice cream, pastries, etc.—to avoid withdrawal symptoms—which causes headaches, etc.