{"id":6727,"date":"2006-07-22T01:13:12","date_gmt":"2006-07-22T01:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/number-please.html"},"modified":"2006-07-22T01:13:12","modified_gmt":"2006-07-22T01:13:12","slug":"number-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/number-please.html","title":{"rendered":"Number, please"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pretty fascinating little CNS story on the Vatican switchboard and phone service. Lots of tasty little nuggets.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

"Working at the (Vatican’s) call center is a very delicate job, and we would never think of putting in automated operators," the brother of the Society of St. Paul told <\/span>Catholic News Service<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

About a dozen nuns who are members of the Pious Disciples of the Divine Master work the switchboards 24 hours a day in six-hour shifts. They come from such countries as South Korea, Malta, Poland, Italy, India, Philippines and Brazil, and they speak a myriad of languages.<\/p>\n

Mornings are their "rush hour" with at least six nuns working, while only two or three need to be on duty for afternoons.<\/p>\n

The Vatican’s telecommunications department moved into its new headquarters in November so its facilities are sleek, comfortable and modern. They even include historical items such as papal telephones and early technological equipment on display in glass cases throughout the three-story brick building.<\/p>\n

The new call center has a giant, flat-screen television in the front of the room so the nuns can follow events being aired on CTV, the Vatican Television Station, and answer people’s questions about a ceremony or audience under way.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Those sisters are a branch of the Daughters of St. Paul:<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pretty fascinating little CNS story on the Vatican switchboard and phone service. Lots of tasty little nuggets. "Working at the (Vatican’s) call center is a very delicate job, and we would never think of putting in automated operators," the brother of the Society of St. Paul told Catholic News Service. About a dozen nuns who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nNumber, please - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/number-please.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Number, please - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Pretty fascinating little CNS story on the Vatican switchboard and phone service. Lots of tasty little nuggets. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}