Pope Benedict XVI Joins Twitter

If you are not a Catholic faithful this news may not be of interest to you because Catholics around the world can now receive spiritual tweets directly from the Pope himself. This was made known by the Vatican on Monday 3rd December 2012 when it announced that Pope Benedict XVI will join Twitter with the handle @pontifex.

“@Pontifex” was chosen for the pope’s personal Twitter account because it is not just Latin for pope, but also means bridge-builder, something the Vatican wants to do through social media. The pope has had a Facebook account for some time, and he has tweeted before, too, though that time he was using the Vatican’s Twitter account. @pontifex will be the pope’s personal account.

For now, Pope Benedict XVI has about 494,000+ Twitter followers, with the number expected to increase considering the over 1.2 billion Catholics scattered all around the world.

Greg Burke, senior media adviser to the Vatican told a news conference that the papal tweets will be spiritual, and added that “all the pope’s tweets are the pope’s words. Nobody is going to be putting words into his mouth.” But he won’t tweet before Wednesday, Dec. 12, according to the Vatican.