Catholic’s 1.2 billion faithful, Pope Benedict XVI, became the first Pope to join Twitter.
Using the handle, @Pontifex, his first tweet read, “Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart.”
On February 28, the day Pope Benedict stepped aside from the Papacy, he tweeted, “Thank you for your love and support. May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives.”
After his resignation, the Vatican suspended the account. However, shortly after Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (now Pope Francis 1) delivered his first address on March 13, the Vatican tweeted a message for the first time since Pope Benedict’s resignation: “HABEMUS PAPAM FRANCISCUM” (We have Pope Francis).
Paving the way for Pope Francis to make use of the account, the Vatican deleted all of the tweets sent from @Pontifex account and Pope Francis took control of it. On March 17, Pope Francis posted his first tweet.
He stated, “Dear friends, I thank you from my heart and I ask you to continue to pray for me. The post was retweeted 36,940 times. His third tweet, sent on the day of his installation, read “True power is service. The Pope must serve all people, especially the poor, the weak, the vulnerable.” It was retweeted 24,124 times.
Though Argentine-born Pope Francis 1 has tweeted only five times, his nine Twitter accounts have gained 4, 449,349 followers worldwide.
While @Pontifex is the Pope’s primary account in English, which currently has 2,176,970 followership, he also communes with the Catholic world with eight other Twitter accounts in eight major languages that offer translations of his tweets.
The eight other accounts are @Pontifex_in (Latin) with 53,238 followers; @Pontifex_de (German) with 81,640 followers; @Pontifex_es (Spanish) with 1,292,028 folowers; @Pontifex_pt (Portuguese) 148,072 followers.
Others are @Pontifex_pl (Polish) with 61,412 followers; @Pontifex_it (Italian) with 493,412 followers; @Pontifex_fr (French) with 100,593 followers and @Pontifex_ar (Arabic) with 41984 followers.
With the way the nine multilingual accounts of Pope Francis is actively pulling in thousands of new followers every day, Twitter could be the veritable platform the Catholic Church will use to reach more of the world’s population about its beliefs.
Already, Pope Francis’ election is the second biggest Twitter event of all time behind President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election.
According to Twitter, some seven million tweets related to the new pontiff emerged on March 13, the day Pope Francis was elected. At its peak, the papal tweeting reached a crescendo of 132,000 tweets per minute.
However, President Obama’s 2012 election victory set the record at 237,000 tweets per minute, back in November. Some 20 million tweets were sent on election night.
According to newmax.com, Pope Francis, who is not a social media maven, has the help of two American undergraduate social media interns from Villanova University in Pennsylvania.
“We’re hoping it becomes even more frequent than what Benedict had before,” intern Sean Hudgins told mashable.com. “Benedict’s [tweets] were kind of sparse, and I think a lot of people want to see with this Twitter how to be more connected to the people, and I think Pope Francis, that’s something that his brand is — to be more of a people person. So, we’re hopeful these tweets will be that.”
Moreover, Vatican communications strategist, Greg Burke, told USA Today that the multilingual social media reach of the world’s first Latin American pope will also be important for the Pope’s ministry.
