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Pope Benedict XVI tweeted for the first time today. His tweet was to announce the new Vatican news aggregator, News.va, which has gone live.

The Pope pushed the site live and tweeted about it using an iPad. The site itself is the first time the Vatican has provided a single place for all the news and opinion surrounding the Church, the Vatican state and the Pope.

Jive Software, the company that has been one of the leaders in collaboration software, has acquired OffiSync, the company that makes social media add-ons to Microsoft Outlook. You gotta love a company that starts out its corporate overview by saying "old business processes and technologies suck" right on its website.

Today, Pope Benedict XVI announced that priests and church leaders should be actively using digital tools, including the social web, to communicate with laypersons, particularly young people.

The occasion was the 44th annual World Communications Day, traditionally a time for the Vatican to project an annual message from the church to its people and the rest of the world. This year's message stood in sharp contrast to the missive he delivered in 2009, when the Holy See stated that mass media - including online information sources - acted as a "poison" that numbed morality and sensitivity. "'It recounts, repeats and amplifies evil," he said, "making us accustomed to horrendous acts, desensitizing us and, in some ways, poisoning us." So, why the about-face?

The Catholic Church isn't exactly known for its speedy adoption of new technologies, but today the Vatican launched a new web portal, as well as a Facebook app to coincide with the upcoming 43rd World Communications Day. In addition, the Vatican also announced an iPhone application. The iPhone application has not been approved by Apple yet, (we assume that even the Vatican's apps gets scoured for porn and profanities), but the Facebook app is available now.