<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/12/03/technology/03reuters-pope-twitter.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/12/03/technology/03reuters-pope-twitter.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes</a></p>
<p>Reading the hashtag comments this morning #pontifex is cracking me up! Most in good nature, some quite funny.</p>
<p>He will apparently tweet for the first time on Dec. 12. (sounds like this is REALLY planned out!!!)</p>
<p>Some of the comments are vulgar, vicious and disgraceful. I really wonder sometimes why people don’t know how to refrain from posting things like that.</p>
<p>*VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The secret’s out. Pope Benedict’s new handle on Twitter will be @pontifex…</p>
<p>Benedict already has 1.2 billion “followers” in the standard sense of the word but next week he will have another type when he enters what for any 85-year old is the brave new world of Twitter…</p>
<p>“The handle is a good one. It means ‘pope’ and it also means ‘bridge builder’,” said Greg Burke, senior media advisor to the Vatican.*</p>
<p>Should be interesting. I’m surprised that it wasn’t timed to begin with Advent.</p>
<p>Zooser…I agree. Some people just have to be nasty.</p>
<p>It’s a little weird but not as much as the ChristianMingle dating site, which apparently God himself has had a hand in.</p>
<p>Apologies to anyone offended by the nasty remarks - I didn’t see them in the couple of “pages” of remarks I read - but remarks are coming in at a fast rate. I was enjoying the lighthearted remarks that were fully “clean”…</p>
<p>No offense taken abasket! I just wonder why people don’t stop themselves before they actually hit send on things like that. What do they get out of it?</p>
<p>I wonder what he’ll tweet? Who he met with that day? Bits on theology? What he had for lunch? lol Since he’s always been older pope, I wonder what he’ll write. </p>
<p>and will he respond to tweets? </p>
<p>Too bad Twitter wasn’t around when JPII was first pope. He was a jet-setter and sporty. He might have tweeted before skiing down a mountain.</p>
<p>Viva il Papa!</p>
<p>Got questions for the Pope? Maybe he’ll pick yours to answer!!!</p>
<p>“The first papal tweets will be answers to questions sent to #askpontifex.”</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>Well, he is foremost a teacher. He was a professor at University of Bonn and University of Munster.</p>
<p>I had a chuckle, for some reason this is life imitating art in a sense…on the old Saturday Night Live they used to have a character, Guido Sarducci, who was supposed to be the gossip columnist for the Vatican Newspaper (I still remember when JPI died and they were in the process of choosing a new Pope, and he was handicapping the candidates, and said Francis Ford Coppola was out of the running because “Apocalypse Now” was too long:). </p>
<p>Obviously Twitter is a way a lot of people communicate these days and it could make sense to use it, but somehow it still hits me as being incongruous, like a gossip column in the Vatican paper;). </p>
<p>Not surprised by the negative and nasty comments, that is the downside of online comments, plus there are a lot of people out there with real anger towards the vatican, add that together, not surprised.</p>
<p>He’s up and tweeting!!! :)</p>
<p><a href=“https://twitter.com/Pontifex[/url]”>https://twitter.com/Pontifex</a></p>
<p>He already has 860,000 followers…wow!</p>
<p>I’m following him. Not a Roman Catholic, but I am a Christian and a few nice thoughts and Bible verses are nice to read amidst the other tweets.</p>
<p>Now he has over 960k followers…he’ll hit a million soon. Wonder how high it will go?</p>