"The numbers of Twitter followers topped 700.000 on Thursday morning, just three days after the Holy Father’s handle @pontifex was announced to the press. The first tweets will be sent by the Pope himself at the Wednesday general audience on December 12th in response to a number of questions he’s received.
But Archbishop Celli (President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications) says it’s less about topping the popularity charts and more about providing a word of faith and hope in the virtual world where men and women of today are increasingly spending most of their time….
"The Holy Father is not looking for popularity – this doesn’t correspond to a pope and it doesn’t correspond to the style of Pope Benedict XVI. I think he is choosing a way to be present where people are….with a tweet, we don’t resolve the problems of the Church, but I think our duty is to be present. The peculiarity of the new technologies is to create an environment where people are living and in such a milieu we have to announce the Gospel, to announce Jesus – we have to be there!" (courtesy of www.vatican.va)
