On his 60th year of priesthood, Pope Benedict XVI launched the Vatican’s new online news portal with a tweet using an iPad. This is not just any tweet, this is the first tweet ever by the Pope himself.
Pope Benedict’s tweet announced the launch of news.va, the online news portal of the Vatican. The tweet came from the Vatican’s @news_va_en account, where the Pope tweeted: “Dear Friends, I just launched www.news.va Praised be Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI.”
The new Vatican news site contains stories of the Pontiff’s ordination 60 years ago. The Pope’s tweet has attracted more than 20,000 Twitter users to follow the Vatican News Twitter page.
The President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications Archbishop Claudio Celli explains that the reason for the Pope’s presence online, by saying: “I want to be present where people come together.”
Thaddeus Jones, the Pontifical Council for Social Communication’s project coordinator said that the Pope was very impressed with the technology.
“He was clearly in awe at the new technology,” he said. “It’s a lighter moment but also an important one, it marks a new way of communicating.”
Now that the Pope sent his first tweet, time will come when he will use Foursquare to grab the mayorship of the Vatican.
In a related news, the fake Jesus twitter account @Jesus_M_Christ has this to say about the historic tweet: “Nah, I’m not mad that the Pope’s first tweet wasn’t at me. I haven’t spoken with a Pope in quite some time.”
