(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…..