Italian edition of L'Osservatore Romano will be available free until September, when a 'very low' charge will come in
The Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, has launched an online edition, but like other press barons concerned about revenue flow in the internet age, Pope Benedict plans to put his paper behind a paywall.
L'Osservatore, which turns 150 in July, is initially offering readers a chance to read its entire Italian edition online on its website, www.osservatoreromano.va, for free.
Its editor, Giovanni Maria Vian, told the Guardian it would start to charge for full access to the daily edition, in Italian, on 1 September. But he added: "The price will be very low."
He and his staff are hoping that, in the meantime, new readers can be drawn to a product that is less focused on the affairs of the world's tiniest state than may be imagined. The latest edition leads with a story on US debt.
Though it relies on analysis more than reportage, L'Osservatore's foreign coverage has always been extensive. Its particularly speciality is focusing on issues in parts of the world ignored by mainstream outlets.
A statement from the paper, announcing the online edition, said: "We publish what the others ignore and ignore a lot of what the others publish."
The daily currently sells only about 12,000 copies. But it also publishes six weekly editions in languages other than Italian, and these have already gone behind pay walls, though they can be accessed for a modest €25 (£22) a year.
Though a traditionalist in many respects, Pope Benedict has repeatedly enjoined the Vatican and his church at large to make full use of the internet and social media to spread the message. Among the features on L'Osservatore's site is a "tag cloud", which gives prominence to key terms in proportion to how often they appear on the site. Unsurprisingly, the most prominent is "Benedict XVI".