Vatican Information Service joins the www.news.va website

Source: FSSPX News

As of July 31, 2012, VIS ceased being a news service distinct from the bulletin of the Press Office of the Holy See.  Within the framework of a more efficient coordination of the Holy See’s communications, the Secretary of State reinforced the multilingual website www.news.va, run by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, which has been active for five years.  VIS personnel will supplement the staff of the Press Office Bulletin, which from now on will be issued in several languages.

The easily accessible website www.news.va regularly posts the major news stories relating to the Holy See and the life of the Church that are published each day by the Press Office, L’Osservatore Romano, Vatican Radio and the Agency Fides;  the news reports are illustrated by videos from the Vatican Television Centre (CTV) and photos from the Photographic Service of L’Osservatore Romano.  The Bulletin of the Press Office will benefit from the additional English-, French- and Spanish-speaking VIS personnel, thus allowing a considerable improvement of the bulletin that it publishes online, with complete translations of documents, or summaries when it is not possible to provide a complete translation.  This new version of the bulletin will be launched gradually in September.

The translated and summarized documents in English, French and Spanish will continue to be addressed to the 60,000 subscribers to VIS.  The 85,000 news stories published for more than twenty years in four languages, easily accessible thanks to a search feature integrated into the Press Office website, constitute an important archive.

VIS was born in 1991, at the initiative of the director of the Press Office at that time, the Spaniard Joaquin Navarro-Valls.  Since then VIS has published a daily dispatch with the official news of the Holy See:  appointments, summaries of homilies, activities of the Roman Curia and communiqués.  Sent free by e-mail throughout the world in the early afternoon, Monday through Friday, VIS is published in four languages:  English, French, Italian and Spanish.  It is produced by a team of seven persons and occasional collaborators.  Initially this daily news service was sent by fax for a paid subscription, particularly to the nunciatures and the major dioceses.  (Sources:  VIS/apic/imedia – DICI no. 259 dated August 10, 2012)

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