The Vatican intends to launch a papal Twitter account for Pope Benedict XVI, a move officials hope will eliminate dozens of unofficial papal Twitter feeds.
The recent Synod of Bishops, on the New Evangelisation, encouraged Catholics to use social networks and other new media environments. It described these as places where “consciences are often formed, where people spend their time and live their lives. It is a new opportunity for touching the human heart.”
Pope Benedict has already used Twitter once in 2011, when he launched a news portal for all of the Vatican’s news outlets. On that occasion he tweeted: “Dear Friends, I just launched News.va. Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI.”
The Pope, who still writes letters by hand, will not tweet personally when the papal account is launched — probably later this year — but he will approve each message posted on his behalf. His tweets will be sent in five or six languages.
“Tweets will be fairly infrequent and their content will probably not veer too far from his texts, and on many occasions point to the things the Pope says,” a Vatican official said.
There are already dozens of unofficial @PopeBenedict usernames on Twitter, some boasting thousands of followers.
While some are being run “obviously by people of goodwill”, the Vatican official said, some phony accounts “aren’t very helpful” because they don’t have the best interests of the Pope of his teachings in mind.
Some of the fake papal Twitter feeds provide off-colour or inappropriate commentary, the official said. But if it’s obviously satire, comedy or parody, “nothing much can be done about that because of freedom of expression”.
But if a Twitter account is using the Pope’s name with the intention of misrepresentation, misleading users of “username squatting” to prevent the Vatican from using the name, “then Twitter can close them down”, he said.
The Vatican already has several accounts in different languages, including Vatican news @news_va_en, Vatican communications @PCCS_VA, and the social network @Pope2YouVatican. The Vatican news site has 105,000 followers.
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Image: Noursat.tv