He already has 1.2 billion “followers” in the
standard sense of the word but next week he
will have another type when he enters what
for any 85-year old is the brave new world of
Twitter. The Vatican said on Monday that the pope will
start tweeting on December 12, the feast of
the Madonna of Guadalupe. “The handle is a good one. It means ‘pope’ and
it also means ‘bridge builder’,” said Greg Burke,
senior media advisor to the Vatican. “The pope wants to reach out to everyone,”
he told a news conference. The first papal tweets will be answers to
questions sent to #askpontifex. The tweets will be going out in Spanish, English,
Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Arabic and
French. Other languages will be added in the
future. “We are going to get a spiritual message. The
pope is not going to be walking around with a
Blackberry or an iPad and no one is going to be putting words into the pope’s mouth. He
will tweet what he wants to tweet,” Burke
said. Primarily the tweets will come from the
contents of his weekly general audience,
Sunday blessings and homilies on major Church
holidays. They will also include reaction to
major world events, such as natural disasters. Benedict will be sending his first tweet himself
on December 12 but in the future most will be
written by aides and he will sign off on them
before they are sent in his name. But while the pope will be one of the world’s
most high-profile tweeters and have many
followers, he will not be following anyone
himself. The pope’s Twitter page is designed in yellow
and white – the colors of the Vatican, with a
backdrop of the Vatican and his picture. It
may change during different liturgical
seasons of the year and when the pope is
away from the Vatican on trips.

FEAR OF HACKING

The Vatican said precautions had been taken
to make sure the pope’s certified account is
not hacked. Only one computer in the
Vatican’s secretariat of state will be used for
the tweets. “The Pope’s presence on Twitter is a concrete
expression of his conviction that the Church
must be present in the digital arena,” the
Vatican said. “This initiative is best understood in the
context of his reflections on the importance
of the cultural space that has been brought
into being by the new technologies … the
pope’s presence on Twitter can be seen as
the ‘tip of the iceberg’ that is the Church’s presence in the world of new media,” it said in
a statement. The pope, who still writes his speeches and
books by hand, has given a qualified blessing
to social networking. In a document issued last year, he said the
possibilities of new media and social networks
offered “a great opportunity”, but warned of
the risks of depersonalization, alienation, self-
indulgence, and the dangers of having more
virtual friends than real ones. In 2009, a new Vatican website,
www.pope2you.net, went live, offering an
application called “The pope meets you on
Facebook”, and another allowing the faithful
to see the pontiff’s speeches and messages on
their iPhones or iPods. The Vatican famously got egg on its face in
2009 when it was forced to admit that, if it
had surfed the web more, it might have known
that a traditionalist bishop whose
excommunication was lifted had for years
been a Holocaust denier.
www.channelstv.com/home/2012/12/03/pope-comes-on-twitter-pontifex/

If he wants to reach out to his catholic members come and learn from our pastors d daddies dey will teach d pope d essence of buying private jets smh

ninja4life: If he wants to reach out to his catholic members come and learn from our pastors d daddies dey will teach d pope d essence of buying private jets smh

hehehe you reach out by 4 private jets for one man aabi? Well done.

Just like lady gaga, britney spears and the rest celebs. When is his album dropping?