Pope John Paul II is being mourned in the online world, just as in the physical world.
We can do little better than the huge list of links that US blogger Jeff Jarvis has been putting together. But, if you're looking for one place to visit, you could do worse than the unofficial Pope Blog, a sober, concise and frequently updated guide to events in and around the Vatican. More links after the jump...
You can read the Wikipedia entry on Pope John Paul II, while Wikinews also has a summary of events, with links to fuller coverage. A Catholic news service, EWTN, has a neatly presented if somewhat incomplete presentation on his life (the multimedia appears to be missing, at the time of writing). Meanwhile MSNBC News has opened a Vatican Watch blog, with reaction from around the world - if very few links into the web - gathered into one place.
The Pope, it seems, was well aware of the wired world that now marks his passing. Indeed, Tom Watson goes as far as to hail John Paul II as the first "wired" pontiff, and not just because he lived through the microcomputer and internet revolutions.
The Pope, says Watson, encouraged the Catholic church to spread the word online, hailing cyberspace as "a summons to the great adventure of using its potential to proclaim the gospel message" in a message on World Communications Day, 2002. You can find the Vatican website here.
Finally, it's worth noting that the praise, of course, is not universal, and blogger Ed Strong is quick to pen a strongly critical assessment of the pontificate, and of John Paul II himself.
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