“Someone had to show the Pope where to press to
send his tweet as he’s not very familiar with modern technology. What is
important is the Pope’s willingness and openness to this new
communication medium,” the President of the Pontifical Council for
Social Communications, Mgr. Carlo Maria Celli, said. Mgr. Celli commented on the launch of the Pope’s new Twitter account, in a statement to ANSA at the end of the “High Speed News” conference organised by the Rome Press Association.
“We were strike by the media interest it sparked across the world. The account has almost 2 million followers - Celli added -. The majority of followers are Brits, followed by the Spanish and the Italians. It is true that there are not many German followers but we were shocked to see so many Arab followers. When I explained the importance of having so many followers and the global effect of retweeting to the Pope, he understood perfectly and was well aware of the immense communicative potential of this.”
“At the moment we are not considering opening a Facebook account for the Pope as it is a much more personal medium, while YouTube and Twitter have a more institutional dimension he continued. It is not true, as some have claimed that the Pope doesn’t even look at tweets, because he has to approve them. The Secretariat of State sends Twitter messages along with other documents to the Pope for approval. If this was not the case, these would not be the Pope’s tweets. Although he doesn’t write the tweets himself, these are the 100% Pope’s messages.”