Cartoon Pope
Pope Benedict XVI may watch TV with his cell phone late this year thanks to Korean-developed technology dubbed terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB).
Domestic cellular phone producers, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, plan to provide 100 DMB-enabled handsets to the Vatican in time for President Roh Moo-hyun's visit to Rome next week.
The phones will be used as a broadcasting terminal late this year when the country's public broadcaster RAI TV launches terrestrial DMB with one video and eight audio channels.
``We plan to offer terrestrial DMB phones to the Roman Catholic Church when President Roh visits there during Feb. 14 to 16,'' an official at the Ministry of Information and Communication said.
``We hope terrestrial DMB will be able to gain toeholds in Italy and other European countries through this contribution by Samsung, LG and the ministry,'' he said.
The accompanying photo with the cartoon hand creeps me out a bit though. It is as if the Pope had escaped from Toontown in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Now I know the Pope has been seen at times in the halls of the Vatican with his iPod, but I seriously doubt if he would find any use for a cell phone with a TV.
Known as 
Yay, cellphones for the whole Church!
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Will his number be published? I wonder what ringtone the Holy Father would have....
He can watch EWTN. Or he can do what we do here at the house: watch CNN to see what we need to pray about.
For some reason this recalls Monty Python's THE BISHOP! where a fully vestmented Bishop is scrambling around, taking orders from his crozier-phone and trying to stop fatal weddings (the bride blows up) or christianings (the baby does the same) and funerals (there's a cannon in the grave). There's this wild opening bit with a spinning cross and a shadowy figure running around. and someone keeps yelling "IT'S THE BISHOP!" It's also just silly. Can you imagine the same thing "It's the Pope!" hee hee
I seriously doubt if he would find any use for a cell phone with a TV.
Well, maybe he'd want to watch Life on the Rock in the Popemobile. (Does EWTN have vidcasts yet?)
"Will his number be published?"
I believe it's VAT 69.
The DMB phones will enable Papa Ratzinger to keep tabs on the goings on in Tod Brown's diocese (Barney Masses, etc) and more readily castigate the reactionary French bishops!
most Catholics, expect those phones free, with their palms and ashes
Noooooo. . . ban the cell phones. Or at least, that's what our archbishop is saying after the main phone company in our area has started selling pornographic images through its cell phones.
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/180475
(That link is not to the material being sold but rather to an article in a major Canadian newspaper on our archbishop's disgust with the situation. . .)
Yay Archbishop Roussin for speaking up!
Does his hand always glow when he holds the phone?