Live from Vatican City, Pope Francis held a Google+ Hangout Thursday morning featuring students with disabilities and special needs from Spain, India, Brazil, and the U.S. to discuss how technology might help improve their learning.
This is his second Google+ Hangout, part of the Scholas Occurrentes initiative to challenge students, developers, and experts to use technology to improve education.
The kids readily shared with Pope Francis how certain technological advances have helped enhance their lives in positive ways—whether it be giving them the ability to read and write, to hear better, to play sports with their friends, or to express their interests through visual avenues like video and film.
A hearing-impaired student from India talked about how his computer has essentially served as a second “teacher,” to which he can refer to when he doesn’t understand the words uttered in his classroom.
In the Hangout held last September, the world’s first Jesuit pope confessed he’s a technological “dinosaur,” “old-fashioned when it comes to computers.”
“I am old-fashioned when it comes to computers. I’m a dinosaur. I don’t know how to work a computer. What a pity, huh?”
Nonetheless, Pope Francis supports technology as a means to help bridge the gap between Vatican City and kids from all over the world.
He often posts messages about faith and current events via social media. His Twitter account, @Pontifex, now has more than 5.48 million followers.
His predecessor Pope Benedict XVI embraced social media as a “great opportunity” for users to adopt a “Christian-style presence” online.
“If used wisely, they can contribute to the satisfaction of the desire for meaning, truth and unity which remain the most profound aspirations of each human being,” he wrote in a letter to his followers.
Pope Benedict XVI started the papal Twitter account and even launched a Vatican YouTube channel. While a proponent of social networks, he cautioned against replacing real friends with virtual ones.
Similarly, Pope Francis has praised the Internet as a “gift from God,” but cautions users not to spend so much time “using the products of technological progress” that they lose sight of “what is really important.”
Watch the heart-warming event below. (Most of it's in Spanish, FYI.)