VATICAN CITY, AUG. 17, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The Holy See denied reports that it made alterations to the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia.
The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, clarified today that accusations saying the Holy See manipulated the encyclopedia written in collaborative form by its readers, "lack all seriousness and logic."
"It is absurd even to think that such an initiative could have even been considered," added the spokesman in a note released by Vatican Radio, of which Father Lombardi is director.
The priest said that "a simple journalistic verification would have been sufficient to realize that the changes made in Wikipedia didn't have anything to do with the Holy See."
According to a Thursday report by the BBC, some organizations, such as the CIA and the Vatican, have altered the content of Wikipedia.
The changes have supposedly been verified by a new tool, called Wikipedia Scanner, that shows the identity of the organizations that modify content of the virtual encyclopedia, which is written and edited by its own users in more than 100 languages.
According to the BBC, someone used computers in the Vatican to edit the page on Gerry Adams, leader of the Irish political party Sinn Fein.
The anonymous user allegedly took out links to articles that reported the supposed finding of Adams' fingerprints in a car used in a double homicide in 1971, according to the BBC.
Another section, titled "Fresh Murder Question Raised," disappeared from the page on the leader of Sinn Fein.
Father Lombardi noted that the accusations received wide coverage in many media organizations, but called this type of reporting "typical" for slow news days, prevalent while the Northern Hemisphere enjoys vacation.
The director of the Vatican press office explained that, even if the BBC verifies the story, one still has to take into account that there are many computers in the Vatican, and that anyone could have access to Wikipedia on any one of them.
ZE07081707 - 2007-08-17