Whispering and blogging

They are housewives, students, priests, journalists and many other professions as well. But they all have one thing in common, they are Catholic bloggers who will be attending the first ever meeting for bloggers in the Vatican. Organised jointly by the Pontifical Councils for Culture and for Social communications, the meeting on May 2^nd will be attended by 150 bloggers from around the world.

One of the participants and a well-known Catholic blogger in the English-speaking world is Rocco Palmo who set up his daily blog in 2004 with a readership of just 3 people. The blog title, Whispers in the Loggia, refers to the tradition of cardinals and bishops whispering about the latest Church news in the loggia, or open-aired hallways attached to Italian churches. Palmo’s blog covers the latest news from the Vatican and the Church around the world and now gets more than 25,000 visitors every day.

Palmo says the importance of this Vatican meeting is that "the Holy See is doing something that only it can do, bringing people together of different language groups, different ideologies and different concepts of the Church and really bringing us together into a unity".... He said his own blog grow rapidly from a readership of just "three friends" and now it's getting 25,000 to 30,000 visitors a day."

Asked about the qualities needed to be a Catholic blogger, Palmo says "You have to be yourself, you have to be human, you have to love the Church, you have to love people, you can't just see things through the prism of your own bias, your own ideology.."

Listen to his interview with Susy Hodges: