In the history of the Catholic Church, the first Pontiff who have an account on the social network Twitter is the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
On 3 December, the official Twitter account, @pontifex_es was launched. But on 12 December, Benedict XVI made his first post.
“Dear friends, I join you with joy through Twitter. Thank’s for your generous answer. I bless you all from my heart”, was the historic first tweet of the late Pope Emeritus.
The Pope’s Twitter account in Spanish already had more than 9,000 followers. In addition to this, eight other accounts were opened, in English, Italian, French, Polish, German, Portuguese, Arabic and Latin.
After the resignation of Benedict XVI from the pontificate, the Twitter accounts in their different languages passed to Pope Francis.
Currently, the Holy Father’s Spanish Twitter account has more than 18.9 million followers. Between the nine accounts, they add more than 53 million followers.