Pope Benedict XVI officially joins Twitter with live tweet event

The Vatican has made it official: Pope Benedict XVI will grace Twitter.

He will start tweeting on Dec. 12, which is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

As you’ll recall, we initially reported this last month. The 85-year-old Benedict first tweeted from a Vatican account last year but the handle @Pope2YouVatican didn’t take off.

The new handle is @pontifex. And you can even ask questions about faith using the hashtag #AskPontifex. The Vatican staff will decide which questions the pope will answer next week in a live tweeting event at the end of his weekly audience.

The pope’s main account will be in English, but there will be accounts in other major languages that translate his tweets.

The Pope joins other religious leaders on Twitter including the Dalai Lama (@dalailama) and Rick Warren (@rickwarren). And religious content “punches above its weight,” with high levels of engagement, Twitter says.

Here are the stats:

- 90% of head pastors of top 10 mega-churches in the U.S. are on Twitter.

- 99% of the largest 77 religious organizations in the U.S. are on Twitter.

- 93% of the top 150 religious organization in the U.S. are on Twitter.

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