We never thought it would last. When Cardinal O'Malley headed off to Rome for the Mass to honor Padre Pio he started a blog. We thought that it would be one of the many blogs that was started and maintained for a short period of time until the author lost interest or got busy with other things. Apparently we were wrong. Cardinal Seán's blog has been up and running from the September inception, though only updated weekly since the initial trip. It's served as a gateway for semi-personal musings from the Cardinal and news for the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.

Today the Globe reports that O'Malley's blogging initiative will expand as webcasts become part of the site. Starting next week (or sometime in early 2007) the Christmas celebrations and wishes are put up as webcasts in Portuguese, Spanish, and English. It's not entirely surprising that the quotes from the Globe article are taken from the Cardinal's PR man, who is probably responsible for the actual updating of the blog. There's a risk of sounding a little insensitive here – but we can't really imagine the Cardinal sitting in the rectory cursing blogger because they wouldn't upgrade his site to the new version. The Globe seems to call out the Church as being a little "old school" when it comes to technology, a funny assertion from a dead tree news source, especially when referring to an institution that is, well, in fact, perhaps the oldest of schools.