This week as we learn about our connection to the Universal Church, adults and older saints may be interested in checking out what’s available at the Vatican’s official web site.

Among the thousands of documents there, you can also find

• the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
• information about saints who have been canonized in the past 25 years or so,
• links to the upcoming World Youth Day (and all the past ones too),
• the history and admission requirements of the Swiss Guard (yes, you do have to be a Swiss citizen),
• a tour of the Vatican’s Secret Archives,
• music performed by the Sistine Chapel’s Musical Chorus (This page links to Lenten pieces; click on the Liturgical Seasons link for other seasons),
• a glimpse at some world-class museums,
• and even the Holy Father‘s official ringtone!  (Just kidding on that last one.)

At this point, I was about to warn you how cumbersome the site’s search engine is and how to get around that, but when I tried it to add a specific example I found they have vastly improved it!  (Hooray!)  It used to be that searching for a document like JPII’s Letter to Artists would yield a long list of press releases, speeches, and other documents where it was referenced in no apparent order, making it extremely difficult to find the actual document.  Now, the actual document comes up as first on the list of 153 places it’s referenced on the site.  That was surprisingly easy!  (In the past, I’d just go to google or yahoo, type in the document name, and then just click on the vatican.va link to it.)