PopeWatch: Twitter Pope

Pope Francis reached a milestone of sorts yesterday:

A jubilant Pope Francis celebrated reaching 10 million followers on messaging site Twitter on Sunday , a milestone in the Vatican’s drive to spread the gospel through social media.

“Dear Followers I understand there are now over 10 million of you!” the pontiff wrote on his nine accounts, which publish simultaneously in languages including Latin, Polish and Arabic. “I thank you with all my heart and ask you to continue praying for me.”

The first non-European pope in 1,300 years has tripled the number of followers of the @pontifex handles since succeeding Benedict XVI in March, according to the Vatican, which announced Francis had reached 10 million after adding together the followers of all his accounts. This would make the pontiff more popular than the New York Times and just behind rapper Kanye West, according to websites.

Go here to Pontifex to read some of the Pope’s tweets.  PopeWatch views this as harmless enough.  The bite sized tweets aren’t going to convert many, but it is better for the Pope to have a presence on social media than not to have a presence.  Saint Paul went to the Areopagus to proclaim Christ to the Athenians, and I have little doubt that if he were spreading the good news today, Saint Paul would be blogging, tweeting, using Facebook and every other form of social media that he could lay his hands on to make Christ known to all.

Herbert Marshall McLuhan, devout Catholic, once famously observed that the medium is the message.   PopeWatch thinks that is debatable, but what is not debatable is that the Church must use all forms of medium to convey her message of eternal salvation