Vatican history on the syllabus for Villanova interns

Marco della Cava | USA TODAY

ROME – Most college internships are low on the prestige scale and high on the coffee-making perks.

Then there's what a couple of kids from New Jersey are doing in a tidy book-filled room surrounded by paintings of priests.

Each weekday morning at 9, Danielle McMonagle and Sean Hudgins put on their Sunday best and walk the Eternal City's cacophonous streets to a building down the road from St. Peter's Square that houses the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. Translation: where the Vatican gets its social media on.

Though the Catholic Church is a 2,000-year-old institution, this is one area in which it benefits from the counsel of two 20-year-old Villanova University communication majors. Their internship duties amount to helping the Holy See disseminate news updates via Facebook and other social media. In return, they get a killer résumé line.

"Saying 'Interned for God' is pretty good," says Hudgins of South Brunswick, N.J., attributing the quip to their boss at the council, Thaddeus Jones, who along with previous Villanova interns helped get the recently resigned Pope Benedict on Twitter in 2011. "On the one hand, it would have been cool to stand near the pope when he sent his first tweet, but on the other, we're here at an amazing time."

Historic might be the more appropriate adjective. Two floors down from the interns' desktop computers, the Vatican press office is busy handing out about 5,000 credentials to media covering the impending conclave that will select the next pope.

McMonagle and Hudgins have been in the thick of things since their first day on the job – Feb. 11, the very day Benedict announced his resignation. Not long after, the pair were given credentials identifying them as official Vatican media to photograph from high atop St. Peter's the outgoing pope's final public blessing.

"Every time I walk through St. Peter's Square and see the crowds and the media, I know this is something I'll never be able to experience again," says McMonagle of Morestown, N.J., whose mother took note of the Pennsylvania university's unique Vatican affiliation years ago.

"I said to her, 'That sounds nice, but I'm still worried about high school, Mom,'" she says with a laugh. "But I'm so glad she put it on my radar."

Villanova's association with the Holy See dates back a decade, when via a few alumni connections, it began helping the Vatican with its computing and communication needs. In 2008, the internship program was created.

"They expressed interest to us in exploring new technologies and media," says Bryan Crable, a Villanova communication professor who helps select the students for the Roman program, which includes afternoon course work.

"The Vatican has to move slowly because not every (Catholic) believes this is the way they should interact with followers," he says. "You can also expose yourself to ridicule in the online arena if you're not careful and vigilant. We thought our students could help with all that."

Among the interns' jobs is making sure that English-language information that appears on the Vatican's all-purpose news site, news.va, reads correctly for native speakers, updating photos for the Vatican's Flickr feed and contributing brief news synopses to its Facebook page.

The duo stay vigilant for copycat Twitter accounts that might try to pass themselves off as Vatican- or pope-related. (Benedict's Latin-inspired Twitter handle, @pontifex, is on hiatus; the next pope will decide whether to continue the account or change the handle.) A third Villanova intern is dispatched each semester to help with more technical computing matters.

The American students, hailing as they do from the land that created Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants, are much appreciated in halls bustling with clergy and laity.

"We are always on the lookout for social media that's tried and tested, but simply put, it's great to have these kids tell us what's cool and what people are really using," says Jones, an American who spent a decade working for Vatican radio before moving to the council to create the Vatican's news site.

"In the old days, you had a radio report or a newspaper story to put out, but now there's a whole new way of working," he says, noting that a newly created app — The Pope App for iPhone, Android and, starting next week, iPad — will help keep people stay connected to the papal excitement. "Now is a special time for us, and we want ways to capture the moments as they happen for everyone."

McMonagle and Hudgins will be a part of those moments, helping connect the world to Rome as 115 red-robed representatives of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics elect their new leader.

"I always knew that just being in this city to study would be amazing," McMonagle says. "But to be working with the Vatican at a time like this is simply surreal."