Skip navigation
Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism University of Southern California
Top Stories

Pope Launches Personal Twitter Account

Benedict XVI will personally respond to several questions once a week in eight languages.

Although not all tweets will be personally worded by the pope, he will approve each one.
Although not all tweets will be personally worded by the pope, he will approve each one.
Benedict XVI, the 265th pope of the Vatican State, officially has his own personal Twitter account.  The pope will tweet in eight languages using the handle @Pontifex. According to Vatican officials, he will respond to questions about faith during his weekly general audience.

@Pontifex garnered close to 150,000 followers only six hours after the Vatican announced the pope would tweet from the account. In addition, thousands of users followed the pope's accounts in the other seven languages.

The pope will simultaneously send tweets in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Arabic and German. A Chinese account could eventually be added, according to Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli, the president of the Vatican social communications office. Celli also emphasized that the tweets should be regarded as "pearls of wisdom" in the pope's own words, rather than religious doctrines.

While not every tweet will be personally sent out by the pope, he will sign off on each one before it is posted. Officials say that someone in the Vatican's secretariat of state will be assisting in tweeting from the account.

"It's always going to have his engagement and his approval," said Monsignor Paul Tighe, one of the heads of the social communications office. "Not physically, but from his mind."

Twitter users can ask the pope questions by using the hashtag #askpontifex. About three to five questions will be answered each week.

Several Twitter accounts are already using the pope's name and claim to be his official account. Tighe has affirmed that @Pontifex is the only official handle that the pope will tweet from. So far, no special security measures have been taken to protect hackers from getting into the account.

Greg Burke, the Vatican's communications advisor, expects Twitter to accommodate the Pope in the same way that it provides for its high-profile celebrity clients.

"They seem to be able to take care of them. We assume they'll be able to take care of us as well," Burke said.

The pope's first tweet was sent last year from a generic Vatican account in an attempt to increase the awareness about faith. The effort was part of the launch for Holy See's Information Portal, which publicly speaks for the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican has been trying to increase its presence on the Internet by using Facebook and YouTube in hopes of engaging both young believers and nonbelievers.

Vatican officials say Pope Benedict will start tweeting from his personal account starting Dec. 12.

COMMENTS
Leave a comment
Name:
E-mail:*
URL:
Comments:*

We've Moved!


By Sam Bergum
01/21/16 | 11:09 a.m. PST

Visit us at uscannenbergmedia.com!

USC Basketball Knocks Off Rival UCLA 89- 75


By Scott Cook
01/14/16 | 12:05 a.m. PST

USC defeats UCLA with stellar play from their Freshmen. 

Holiday Bowl - USC vs Wisconsin Post-Game Press Conference

Su'a Cravens: "It's the players that need to step up"

Darreus Rogers: "It comes down to the players"

Trojans Fall to Wisconsin in the Holiday Bowl 23-21

We detected that you might be on a mobile device such as an iPad or iPhone. Sorry, at this time the video box is only visible on desktop computers.