The third assembly of the Association of Italian Catholic Webmasters met in Rome in recent days (5-6 June) ( www.weca.it http://www.weca.it ). WECA is the “first association in Europe of the Catholic world present on the web”, as recalled by its President, Monsignor Franco Mazza, vice-director of the office of social communications of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. “Committing ourselves to defending the weaker sections of the population is, for us, a constant focus of attention”, he explained, recalling the information and awareness-raising campaign conducted by the association thanks to Copercom (Coordination of Associations for Communication) to “bring home to people the grave dangers to which the dignity and protection of minors are exposed”, on the occasion of the discussion of the bill on paedo-pornography, later approved by Parliament in January this year. As regards the Catholic presence on the internet, eighty new sites are registered each month, according to Francesco Diani, vice-president of Catholic webmasters and founder of www.siticattolici.it. “At the present time we have counted 12,100, of which over 10,600 are still active”, he explained. According to Msgr. Mazza, these figures “place the variegated Italian Catholic world on the web in first place among the nations of Europe”. According to the founder of siticattolici.it, the Church’s commitment in the field of communication has given impetus to the use of the new technologies, and in particular the web. “The websites continue to increase in number, and concurrently their quality is also improving”, emphasized Diani. “Several are really excellent in quality today, while there are really very few poor ones”.
