Pope Benedict XVI sent his first tweet ever Tuesday while using a Twitter app on his iPad.
"Dear Friends, I just launched www.news.va. Praised be our Lord Jesus
Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI," wrote the Pope,
using his formal name in Latin - the Vatican's official language.
The news.va web portal is the newest step in the Vatican's move toward social media. In the past few months, it has launched popular Facebook and YouTube pages in an appeal to spread the church's message to a wider and more youthful audience.
The Pope has long been a supporter of the utilization of social media, even encouraging priests to partake in the popular technology in a message on the Vatican website posted in May.
"The spread of multimedia communications and its rich 'menu of options'
might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web, or to
see it only as a space to be filled. Yet priests can rightly be
expected to be present in the world of digital communications as
faithful witnesses to the Gospel, exercising their proper role as
leaders of communities which increasingly express themselves with the
different 'voices' provided by the digital marketplace. Priests are thus
challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of
audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs,
websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new
vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis."
Pope Tweets For The First Time
Jun 28, 2011, 14:56 by Sarah Long