Pope Francis has passed 10 million followers across nine different
language accounts on the popular social media network Twitter, where
users publish messages of 140 characters or fewer.
On Oct. 27, Pope Francis tweeted, “Dear Followers I understand there are
now over 10 million of you! I thank you with all my heart and ask you
to continue praying for me.”
As of Oct. 29, the papal Twitter accounts had a total of 10,070,848
followers. The most popular account is the Spanish-language one, with
more than 4 million followers. The English-language account comes in
second, with 3.1 million followers.
Papal Twitter accounts have also been established in Arabic, French,
German, Italian, Latin, Portuguese and most recently, Polish.
In July, Pope Francis was named “the most influential world leader on
Twitter” according to a global communications report by
Switzerland-based public relation and communications firm
Burson-Marsteller.
The report found that Pope Francis’ Spanish-language tweets were
re-tweeted an average of 11,116 times. His English-language tweets were
re-tweeted by an average of 8,219 followers.
His closest competitor by this measure was U.S. President Barack Obama, whose tweets were re-tweeted on average 2,309 times.
The Pope is also the second most-followed world leader on Twitter, after President Obama, who has 39 million followers.
The official “Pontifex” Twitter accounts were launched last December by
Benedict XVI, who amassed 2.5 million followers during his first month
and built a following of several million before his resignation at the
end of February this year.
Pope Francis continued Benedict’s practice of sending short messages
reflecting on Jesus and the Christian life after his March 13 election
to the papacy. His tweets include prayers and short passages from his
homilies.
Claire Diaz Ortiz, Manager of Social Innovation at Twitter, told CNA in
January that the Pope’s ability to connect with his flock on Twitter “is
an inspiring fact for believers everywhere.”
She described the multiple language accounts as “wonderful examples of
how one leader can connect in many different languages with Twitter
followers throughout the world.”