London, Jan 24 : The Vatican has launched a YouTube channel devoted to the Pope in a bid to target online audiences and spread the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Also, the Holy See revealed that it is planning to give Pope Benedict XVI a Facebook profile.

YouTube will showcase clips of the 81-year-old Pontiff in a renewed effort to engage with the tech-savy generation, reports the Telegraph.

"We are convinced that there are people interested in the pope''s message and that they, in their search for the meaning of life, are among the many who surf the web. It is for them that we have opened a YouTube channel," said chief Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi.

The Vatican, however, had not paid Google, YouTube owners, to launch the channel.

"We didn''t pay a cent to Google," Father Lombardi said, adding that the channel was the Vatican''s "offer" to the world.

The Pope''s debut on the site "writes a new page in the history of the Holy See", the Vatican''s website said.

The Vatican will update the YouTube site with the most important papal news items of the day, with messages available in Italian, German, English and Spanish. (ANI)