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(EMAILWIRE.COM, December 19, 2012 ) San Francisco, CA -- Vatican officials announced on Monday that Pope Benedict XVI will have a personal account on Twitter, where he will compose his own tweets and answer weekly questions about faith.
The Twitter account, @Pontifex will officially launch on Dec. 12 when the Pope will answer a question about faith. Questions may be sent to the pontiff using the hashtags #askpontifex or #B16.
According to the Catholic Church, tweets from the Pope will initially only occur on Wednesdays in association with the general audiences he conducts in Rome, but the tweets could soon come more frequently.
In a statement, the church said, "The Pope's presence on Twitter is a concrete expression of his conviction that the Church must be present in the digital arena."
The pope's account on Twitter "can be seen as the 'tip of the iceberg' that is the Church's presence in the world of new media," according to the Church.
CNN learned from Vatican officials that the Pope will be crafting thee tweets himself and, for the initial tweet, will actually click the "Tweet" button to send his initial missive. After that, members of the Pope's staff will actually send out the tweets.
Back in June 2011, the Pope actually sent out his first tweet, via the Twitter account for the Vatican news site, @news_va_en. His tweet said, "Dear friends, I just launched News.va. Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI." The tweet was part of the proceeding to launch the new news site.
The Twitter account name that the Pope will use, @Pontifex, means "bridge builder" in Latin.
The Pope is not the spiritual and religious leaders to use Twitter and other forms of social media to spread their messages. A wide range of religious and spiritual content is posted from globally known leaders, such as the Dalai Lama (@DalaiLama) all the way down to local pastors and faith groups.
In a statement, a Twitter spokeswoman said that religious leaders "punch above their weight" on the social networking site.
"An average religious leader has a rate of about one retweet for every 500 followers while a musician on Twitter would get one retweet for every 30,000 followers," said Twitter spokeswoman Rachael Horwitz.
"We see a very high level of engagement with religious and spiritual content: followers respond to these topics with replies, retweets, and clicks on links much more often than they do other subjects," she added.
Pope John Paul II, who the pontiff who preceded Benedict, was the first to use the Internet. Popes from history have always embraced new technology to get their messages across to the most people. Pope Pius XI conducted the first papal radio broadcast in 1931 while Pope Pius XII was the first pope to appear on television all the way back in 1946.
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Benjamin Wrights
4157669098
news@postpressrelease.com 
Source: EmailWire.com
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