Pope Benedict XVI to begin tweeting from own papal handle this year: Vatican

GlobalPost

After embracing Twitter via the Vatican account, Pope Benedict XVI will reportedly begin tweeting from his own personal handle by the end of the year.

According to a Newsmax report, the pope will be sharing opinions and Church news urbi et orbi – "to the city and the world" — via the social networking platform.

A source told Newsmax:

"It will be proper language, for example pointing to his weekly catechesis [teaching] or whatever he is doing on that day. You're probably not going to get any tweets saying 'a great new pizzeria has just opened in my neighborhood.'" 

According to PC Magazine, Benedict helped to launch the Vatican's news information portal last year, sending a tweet from the Vatican's English language account, @news_va_en, in June that said:

"Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI."

The message was sent via an Apple iPad.

In February, the 85-year-old pontiff sent out one papal message for every of the 40 days of Lent — in English, Portugese, Spanish, Italian, French and German — via the Twitter handle @Pope2YouVatican.

More from GlobalPost: Pope Benedict XVI to embrace Twitter for Lent

The Vatican said the new Twitter account would belong to Benedict, but as he didn not normally use a computer it was likely he would write each sub-140-character message in longhand and let someone else do the tweeting, the Associated Press wrote.

The AP cited a papal spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, as saying details about Benedict's handle would be released when the Vatican officially launched the account.

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