by Isi Esene

The Catholic Pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, has opened a Twitter account. His account attracted over 31, 000 followers in less than one hour after the Vatican announced his action.

The number of followers garnered in record time was all the more remarkable noting the fact that the Pope is yet to post any tweet.

He opened the account in English and six other languages namely; Italian, French, German, Polish, Portuguese, Arabic and Spanish.

Each account opened by the Pope is following the other.

According to a statement released by the Vatican: “The first tweets will be answers to questions sent to the pope on matters of faith. The public can start sending them starting now.

“The Pope’s presence on Twitter is a concrete expression of his conviction that the Church must be present in the digital arena. This initiative is best understood in the context of his reflections on the importance of the cultural space that has been brought into being by the new technologies.

“In his Message for World Communications Day 2009, which was published on the same day as the Vatican’s YouTube channel was opened, Pope Benedict spoke of the necessity of evangelizing the ‘digital continent’ and he invited young believers, in particular, to introduce into the culture of this new environment of communications and information technology the values on which you have built your lives. ”

At the rate is garnering followers we won’t be surprised if the Pope’s account gets verified soon.

Let the church say amen.