One year on from first papal tweet

(Vatican Radio) On December 12th last year, the former pontiff Benedict XVI made news headlines across the globe by inaugurating the Vatican’s first Twitter account. One year later, that account - @Pontifex – available in nine languages including Latin – now has close to 11 million followers who receive regular tweets of the thoughts and words of Pope Francis. Furthermore those short spiritual messages are then re-tweeted and reach around 60 million people worldwide.
To find out what impact this initiative has had, Alessandro Gisotti spoke with the head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Archbishop Claudio Celli…

Listen:

I think the choice of Papa Benedict was really prophetic….when we were proposing to the Holy Father to open an account, we were considering clearly the difficulties and the dangers of entering such a reality….but we thought it was good to be present….to use a language that young men and women are using normally in their daily lives…
The wish of the Holy Father was to be heard and understood by the young generation….today at least 60 million people are receiving on their smartphone the tweet of the Holy Father.
And I consider that in this moment of increasing spiritual desertification, it’s important to have just a drop of fresh water, a drop of spirituality and such moments are favouring the spiritual dimension of human beings today…..