Vatican Lifts Bios for New Cardinals From ... Wikipedia

Spokesperson: We were in a hurry, official bios coming
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 9, 2012 8:21 AM CST
Vatican Lifts Bios for New Cardinals From ... Wikipedia
The Wikipedia logo.   (©throwthedamnthing)

Well, this is embarrassing: The Vatican was recently caught lifting biographical information for its own cardinals from Wikipedia. The biographies for 22 new cardinals appointed Friday were sent to journalists, who noticed that the information had been taken from the Italian-language version of Wikipedia with no attribution. The Guardian notes the irony, considering the Vatican's library includes more than 180,000 manuscripts and 1.6 million books. A Vatican spokesperson says the biographies were marked "unofficial" and that Wikipedia was only used because there was a rush. "Since then we have been putting up official bios on our site," he adds. (More Vatican stories.)

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