Source: The Economist:
BENEDICT XVI became the first Pope to abdicate the papacy since 1415 when he announced his decision to retire at the end of February, saying that he is too old to continue. In many ways he has been a reformer. @Pontifex, the Pope’s official English-language Twitter feed, was launched on December 12th, along with seven other versions. The Vatican later added Latin to the roster. From Benoît XVI (French) to بندكتس السادس عشر (Arabic), nuggets such as “Mary is filled with joy on learning that she is to be the mother of Jesus, God’s Son made man” have been miraculously popular; the Pope has amassed 2.8m Twitter followers. (@Pontifex follows only the other eight official, non-English papal feeds.) The Pew Forum of Religion and Public Life reckons that there are a total of 1.1 billion Catholics across the globe. A back-of-the-envelope estimate by The Economist puts approximately 900m speaking one of the nine languages that the Pope tweets in. That’s one Twitter follower for every 320 Catholics. Jesus would be proud.
Categories: CHRISTIANITY, Europe, Italy, Religion