78-year old Pope now officially more technologically advanced than me

A group of Vatican Radio employees gave Pope Benedict XVI a brand new iPod nano loaded with special Vatican Radio programming and classical music.

To honor the pope’s first visit to the radio’s broadcasting headquarters, the radio’s technical staff decided the pencil-thin, state-of-the-art audio player would make the perfect gift.

Now that Vatican Radio offers podcasts in eight different languages, the pope has the technological capability to plug in and import the radio’s audio files.

Pope Benedict visited the programming and broadcasting hub of “the pope’s radio” March 3 to mark the station’s 75th anniversary.

Hundreds of radio journalists, sound engineers and support staff lined the radio’s hallways to greet the pope and present him with gifts, mostly special in-house productions such as CDs and books on the church, religion and the pope.

“We don’t have a huge gift to give to the pope, but we do have small signs of our work” to give him, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican Radio’s general director, told Catholic News Service.

Though the white iPod nano is tiny, it still made an impression on the pope. When the head of the radio’s technical and computer support department, Mauro Milita, identified himself and handed the pope the boxed iPod, the pope was said to have replied, “Computer technology is the future.”

The pope’s new 2-gigabyte digital audio player already was loaded with a sampling of the radio’s programming in English, Italian and German and musical compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Frederic Chopin, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Igor Stravinsky. The stainless steel back was engraved with the words “To His Holiness, Benedict XVI” in Italian. [Read more…]