THE Vatican has finally revealed the Twitter account name of the Pope.
Pope Benedict's new handle on the social network will be @pontifex, beating other contenders that had been considered to showcase the thoughts of one of the world's most visible leaders.
The Pope already has 1.2 billion followers in the standard sense of the word, but next week he will be able to amass another type when he enters the brave new world of Twitter.
The Vatican said yesterday the Pope will start tweeting on December 12.
"The handle is a good one. It means 'Pope' and it also means 'bridge builder'," said a Vatican spokesman.
Among the other handles Vatican officials had reportedly considered was @BenedictusPPXVI, but they opted for something linked to the office of the papacy.
The papal tweets will be spiritual, the Vatican said.
And even though Benedict is not the kind of person who walks around with a Blackberry or iPad, the spokesman said "all the Pope's tweets are the Pope's words. Nobody is going to be putting words into his mouth."
The first papal tweets will be answers to questions sent to #askpontifex, and the tweets will be going out in Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Arabic and French. Other languages will be added in the future.
Primarily the tweets will come from the contents of his weekly general audience, Sunday blessings and homilies on major Church holidays. They will also include reactions to major world events.
Benedict will be pushing the button on his first tweet himself on December 12 but, in the future, most will be typed in by aides and he will sign off on them.
While the Pope will be one of the world's most high-profile tweeters and have many followers, he will not be following anyone himself.
To reduce the chance of hacking, the Vatican said only one computer will be used to tweet from.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article