Pope Benedict XVI joins Twitter officially: First tweet to be expected on December 12

The head of the Catholic Church at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI, has signed Twitter with the handle @pontifex (latin for “pope”). This account has already gathered about 70 thousand followers. And the first tweet of the first papal will be at December 12th to coincide with the festival of Our lady of Guadalupe.
The Vatican officials beleive that fake accounts will stop with the official account being launched.

All tweets would be in English and will be translated to Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Arabic and French – for the spiritual message to be spread through separate accounts.

Although the forthcoming tweets are to be expected from advisers, the first tweet will be from Pope Benedict XVI.

Burke, the senior media adviser to the Vatican,says, “The Pope wants to reach out to everyone. We are going to get a spiritual message. The pope is not going to be walking around with a Blackberry or an iPad and no one is going to be putting words into the pope’s mouth. He will tweet what he wants to tweet.”