Pope John Paul II
He won't be offering confessions on the world wide web just yet but the Pope today caught up with the rest of the world and urged his flock of priests to spread the word of God through the internet.
At the same time, however, the Vatican warned priests to be on guard for such problems as online pornography, "hate sites, the dissemination of rumour and character assassination under the guise of news, and much else."
Pope John Paul II, who has embraced TV, CDs and other modern technology to make plain his thinking, recently used a laptop to send pastoral instructions to bishops in far-flung Oceania.
The onternet, said Monsignor John P Foley, the American archbishop who leads the Vatican's communications network, "is an opportunity and a challenge and a not a threat".
However, Monsignor Foley acknowledged that the internet's power was not always used for noble ends, even by those within the church.
A priest in rural Spain was arrested in early February as a suspect in an internet child pornography ring that also served as an electronic forum for child abusers to exchange experiences.
The Vatican's message about the internet aims to emphasise that the Catholic church "should have a visible, active presence on the internet and be a partner in the public dialogue about its development".
The Vatican said it was encouraging its flock, from bishops to parents, to monitor the quality of internet content and guide young people in their eager embrace of it.
"The internet can unite people, but it also can divide them, both as individuals and as mutually suspicious groups separated by ideology, politics, possessions, race and ethnicity, intergenerational differences, and even religion," says the Vatican in the document, entitled 'Ethics in Internet."
"Already it has been used in aggressive ways, almost as a weapon of war, and people speak of the danger of 'cyber-terrorism'," it adds.