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He may not be in with the local Emo cult, and you're unlikely to see him hanging out at a skateboard park. But the Holy Father moved one step closer to cool today when he launched the Vatican's own YouTube site on Google.

Pope Benedict XVI said he wanted to reach out to "the digital generation", but in doing so he warned the young against the dangers of "sharing words and images that are degrading of human beings, that promote hatred and intolerance, that debase the goodness and intimacy of human sexuality or that exploit the weak and vulnerable".

In a message marking World Communications Day, the 81-year-old said new digital technologies were "bringing about fundamental shifts in patterns of communication and human relationships". These changes were particularly evident "among those young people who have grown up with the new technologies and are at home in a digital world that often seems quite foreign to those of us who, as adults, have had to learn to understand and appreciate the opportunities it has to offer for communications".

If used "to promote human understanding and solidarity", new technologies were "truly a gift to humanity" Pope Benedict said. "The accessibility of mobile telephones and computers, combined with the global reach and penetration of the internet, has opened up a range of means of communication that permit the almost instantaneous communication of words and images across enormous distances and to some of the most isolated corners of the world; something that would have been unthinkable for previous generations."

Young people in particular had "grasped the enormous capacity of the new media to foster connectedness, communication and understanding between individuals and communities, and they are turning to them as means of communicating with existing friends, of meeting new friends, of forming communities and networks, of seeking information and news, and of sharing their ideas and opinions".

Encounters in cyberspace however should be based on dignity and respect, with a "genuine and mutual searching for truth - life is not just a succession of events or experiences, it is a search for the true, the good and the beautiful. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by those who see us merely as consumers in a market of undifferentiated possibilities, where choice itself becomes the good, novelty usurps beauty, and subjective experience displaces truth."

Father Federico Lombardi, the papal spokesman, told a packed press conference at the Vatican that Google would not profit from the venture since the Vatican YouTube site would carry no advertising. It would post "up to four" video clips a day of the Pope's speechs and activities, in Italian - the language of the Vatican - with translations into English, Spanish and German.

The project would cost the Holy See budget nothing since it would use existing Vatican radio, TV and communications staff, Father Lombardi said. He said users could post comments, but for the time being the Vatican would not respond.

Henrique De Castro, managing director of Media Solutions at Google, said: "Sites like YouTube are enabling people to foster existing communities and create new ones around interests, issues and faith, on a local level and on a global level". The public was already able "to ask Presidential candidates questions in the US and have access to what is going on at Buckingham Palace". Geography, age and race were "no barrier for the global community" he said. "One of the most popular UK YouTube users is a pensioner called Peter Oakley, who was born in 1927".

He added: "The Catholic Church understands this opportunity and has embraced it. This is only the beginning. A few years ago we could not have predicted that we would be here announcing this today, and we are sure that the future will bring further exciting developments".

Asked if the Pope himself used the Internet, Monsignor Claudio Celli, head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said: "I presume so, knowing the kind of man he is." He said the use of new technology sometimes went too far, and people sometimes needed silence and reflection. "I know of some people who go to sleep with their mobile phones still switched on," he said in apparent disbelief.