Have you heard? Pope Benedict XIV is stateside, rocking our nation's capital before a trip to New York tomorrow for a busy weekend schedule. His tour's the hot ticket of the early spring - 46,000 people attended public mass today, and NYC security officials are planning for a "UN general assembly, parade, and presidential visit rolled into one." Have mercy, indeed.

But if you can't attend the events this weekend (i.e. you live elsewhere or, you know, you've got other plans you made forever ago), live video on the web has you covered. NewTeeVee has the goods on a couple of great services from MSNBC and the Washington Post, but we're giving our blessing to WatchThePope.com, a new site set up exclusively for the big visit by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn's Prayer Channel on Cablevision.

That's right, we're going with the non-secular upstart over the mainstream media, but it's not because of their product - if you actually want to follow the pope's every move in your pajamas, we've found WatchThePope's video to be less reliable and lower quality than the other guys' streams (though this may change once Benedict is on the diocese's home turf in NYC). WatchThePope won us over with their attention to the little things:

• an awesome URL, obviously
• backing up that URL with a sweet website, complete with do-it-yourself-mitre-hat instructions (PDF)
  
• a puntastic, audacious series of web/print ads
• an amazing run of TV commercials

We're calling that last one as WTP's lasting legacy - check out the spots below and just try to claim that they don't deserve YouTube glory long after Benedict has departed.
Catch those last five seconds? "Watch-a the pope-a dot coo-oooom!" is great in so many ways, from that spicy meatball of an accent to the mere image of an Italian monk somewhere singing URLs. Practice that melody and spread the good word, readers - and thank you again, internet gods.

link:// watchthepope.com