Goodbye to the old papyrus: the Vatican's new website and its evolution since 1995

The Holy See is debuting a new design for its website, just weeks after the election of the new Pope Leo XIV.

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The Vatican's new website has a very clean and modern look. The homepage features an image of Leo XIV smiling on a light blue background. The old static menus on this website have been replaced with a menu that drops down from the right. Furthermore, and if I'm not mistaken, this is Vatican.va's first responsive website design, meaning it automatically adapts to laptops, tablets, or mobile phones. A great step forward, although it comes years behind compared to most websites.

Another significant detail is that Vatican.va is using "sliders" for the first time, which are content sliders that automatically scroll horizontally to present different content to visitors. This element has been around for many years in web design, but the Vatican website had never used it before. Another significant feature is the "News" section, which includes content that can be navigated by scrolling vertically within the website itself, something that Vatican.va has had since December 2020.

The most striking feature of this new website design is that Vatican.va is abandoning the old papyrus background after decades. This is an element that has been present on the Holy See's website since the 1990s and that offered a very traditional, but somewhat outdated, look by current web design trends. The speed with which the new Holy See portal was launched, just a few weeks after the election of Leo XIV, indicates that the Pope Presidency must have considered this renewal a priority in terms of communication, which is a success. However, much of the portal's content remains available with the old design.

It should be noted that the Vatican website, www.vatican.va, was launched under the pontificate of Saint John Paul II, specifically on December 25, 1995, Christmas Day, with a message from the Polish Pope on this Christian holiday and a low-resolution image of the Supreme Pontiff. That first website was designed by a Franciscan sister, Judith Zoebelein, born in the USA in 1948 and who is still the editorial director of the Internet Department of the Holy See. I have not been able to find any screenshots of that first website. You can see some images here that show the evolution of the Vatican website over the years.

1998

The oldest copy I could find of the Vatican website is from January 30, 1998, the day the first copy of that portal was made on the Web Archive. At that time, there was already an element that has endured for many years on this website: its home page, with the papal coat of arms, an image of St. Peter's Square and the Sistine Chapel, and, below, a horizontal menu with links to content in six languages: German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese.

Once you selected a language, a page with a simple design appeared, divided into six main sections illustrated with icons and a text-based side menu.

2001

Three years later, the Vatican.va homepage remained unchanged, but there were changes to the content design, with a more modern circular menu, which had been introduced a year earlier. A striking feature of this language-specific menu was the absence of any image of Saint John Paul II. An image of the first Pope, Saint Peter, appeared, but not of the Polish Pope. This screenshot was archived on March 9, 2001, at the Web Archive.

2005

Even during the pontificate of St. John Paul II, and while maintaining the 1998 home page, Vatican.va introduced more color into its content in several languages, with a more sophisticated design and a very modern-looking circular menu. The papyrus background was maintained. This screenshot is from a Web Archive copy from March 25, 2005.

2008

With the pontificate of Benedict XVI, there were some changes to the website. The home page with the menu of the different languages ​​remained exactly the same as ten years earlier, but the design introduced an image of Pope Ratzinger, smiling and waving. This screenshot is from an automatic copy from the Web Archive, March 9, 2008.

2014

Following the election of Pope Francis, there were finally some changes to the home page, albeit very minor. Its appearance remained the same, but new sections in Chinese and Latin were included.

Additionally, the web content has kept the circular menu, but with an improved appearance, along with an image of the Argentine Pope. This screenshot is from an automatic copy from the Web Archive, March 21, 2014.

2020

On December 25th of this year, Vatican.va celebrated its 25th anniversary. The day before, the Holy See debuted a new website design. The circular menu was abandoned, replaced by a less innovative design, and a horizontally scrolling menu with portraits of all the Popes since St. Peter's was introduced. Furthermore, this website did away with the home page for the first time, replacing it with a drop-down menu that allowed users to select the appropriate language.