Get ready….The Pope’s about to Tweet…
Today the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI has a new twitter handle @pontifex and is planning to do his first tweet on December 12th, in eight languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Arabic, Portugese and Polish. The Vatican’s new American media consultant, Greg Burke, told a packed press room today that “the first tweets will be answers to questions about faith.” The public can send questions to the Pope’s twitter account until December 12th and a few will be chosen to receive a response. It will be interesting to see how the Pope will deliver deep religious answers in 140 characters.
There is no doubt that there is a lot of interest in a tweeting Pope. I was amazed watching the Pope’s twitter followers rise exponentially from the moment @pontifex was opened on twitter at noon in Rome today. Within the first half hour the Pope ahd 2,000 followers, 15,000 within two hours and now as I am about to post–10 hours later– he is up to 211,000 followers.
Outside the Vatican press office, on the edge of St. Peter’s Square, the idea of a tweeting Pope got a mixed reception. A lovely, young nun with a name almost too long for a tweet, Sister Giuliane Cinciatto Gonsalves Dos Santos, giggled as she said, “e’ Bellissimo” (it’s beautiful), “The Pope will walk together with the young people who today walk with technology.” A Dutch tourist sitting nearby, Sandro Autens, was less enthusiastic, saying, “he should do other things to reach out to the young people, like start allowing condoms and stuff like that. I think that would be better, and he could tweet about that.”
Greg Burke told the press that for the moment the Pope has no intention of following anyone. Too bad, I was hoping he would be interested in following @mozzarellamamma
Oh, gawd! There has to be a cheep joke in there somewhere – ahh! There it is!
Alan, you wouldn’t believe how many jokes and digs the poor Pope has recieved on his @pontifex account already. I feel sorry for the poor sod at the Vatican who has to go through all those messages.
There were lots of great ones, but the funniest one (well, the funniest one I can write on this site) was “After all those letters to the Corinthians…did they ever write back?”
Modernization? Yeah right. When they make women priests and accept birth control, then they’ll START to be modernizing. Right now I’d say they’re in the late Baroque period. I guess Benedictus figures, “Heh, if it ain’t baroquen, don’t fix it!”
Zach — You totally crack me up…yes, no on answered all those letters to the Corinthians…and can you imagine if instead of being letters they had been tweets. Yikes!