MuckFlash

Rome, IT -20 March 2009- Staff. Giancarlo Versimmi isn’t one to mince words, a quality which could come in handy as he takes over the Vatican’s flagging public relations efforts. Faced with increasingly negative publicity amid a string of widely publicized gaffes by the unpopular Pope Benedict, the Holy See has quietly, but urgently, engaged the services of Versimmi, a colorful, though not internationally well known, Italian marketing expert and onetime Catholic priest.

“I am going to, how you say, raise the roof on this thing,” Versimmi said in an exclusive interview. “The Vatican and the church have their cool things; it’s only a matter of floating the cream to the top.” It’s a tall order, as Versimmi begins work with a press office which has traditionally closed every day at 3pm and an organization with virtually no online skills or strategy.

Responding to broad public consensus that the Vatican is behind the times in how it deals with public perception in the internet age, Versimmi laid out a clear strategy to get the Pontiff on the Internet and support his views with a coordinated press plan that incorporates the Internet and social media, including popular services like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

“We take issues of this nature very seriously, of course, but even with serious issues, why not use the power of social media to put the Pope on Twitter, eh?” Versimmi remarked wryly. “You gonna see the Pope from so many angles, you will interact with him as a human, to see the love of Jesus that’s inside of him,” said Versimmi, “That is the amazing power of the blogosphere.”

Asked when the public would see these new features, Versimmi was similarly ambitious. “When you turn around from leaving here, be prepared to see a new Pope, a new church. Martin Luther couldn’t touch the kind of engagement we can leverage from an online Mother Church.”

Critics, however, maintain that a modernized media strategy remains secondary to the very substantive faults in the way the Pope has applied his often anachronistic and controversial world view to a variety of critical issues. Said Mary Dovers, director of the Institute for Religious Thought and Policy, “You can wrap this up in whatever blog or ‘Twat’ that you want, but a flawed policy is a flawed policy. Instead of telling us things in a faster, flashier way, why not engage people in a thoughtful, meaningful discussion?”