Today is the World Day of Communications. To mark the occasion, and to foster its own communications, the Vatican has established, like Buckingham Palace and the White House before it…its own YouTube channel. Which, unsurprisingly, slang-happy media members have already deemed the “PopeTube.”

Speaking from the Vatican earlier today, Pope Benedict XVI called social networking technologies like YouTube, Facebook, and Myspace a “a gift to humanity,” saying that they reflect and respond to people’s “fundamental desire” to communicate with each other. But he also warned against “obsessive” virtual interactions, saying, per the AP, that the Web can “isolate people from real interaction and deepen the digital divide by excluding those already marginalized.”

Check out the channel—which is currently available, rather tellingly, in Italian, Spanish, English, and German versions—here.