Pope Benedict XVI's first week on Twitter reviewed | Oliver Burkeman | Comment ... - The Guardian (blog)

This week, Pope Benedict XVI joined Twitter, a social networking site you might have read about once or twice before on the Guardian, under his DJ name of @Pontifex. About time, too, given the calibre of the spiritual leaders who've already been tweeting for a while: the Dalai Lama, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Piers Morgan. The Pope's English-language feed quickly accumulated 1.1m followers, so he has a way to go before he's as popular as William Shatner. But still: not bad.

So how's he been doing? Let's examine the Vicar of Christ's first week on Twitter, and determine what lessons we can learn from it.

He got off to what seemed like a good start:

How can faith in Jesus be lived in a world without hope?

— Benedict XVI (@Pontifex) December 12, 2012

Now, to be honest, you'd have though that he wouldn't need to ask: if anyone knows the answer, surely it's going to be the Pope? But "crowdsourcing" is an increasingly respectable method for data-gathering, so it was a little disappointing when, shortly afterwards, Pontifex made clear that the question was rhetorical, and that his true plan was to become another of those Twitter aphorists:

We can be certain that a believer is never alone. God is the solid rock upon which we build our lives and his love is always faithful

— Benedict XVI (@Pontifex) December 12, 2012

Thanks for your contribution. But so serious! Fortunately, it wasn't long before the pontiff let his lighter side begin to show:

Benedict XVI @Pontifex
+1 ROFLMAO RT @Buzzfeed: The 17 Most Adorable Priests on Instagram

Benedict XVI @Pontifex
Not Far From Heaven #catholicfilms

Benedict XVI @Pontifex
What To Expect When You're Expecting To Go To Purgatory #catholicfilms

Cannily, Benedict also saw that he was in a position to make his own unique contribution to the 24-hour watercooler that is Twitter:

Benedict XVI @Pontifex
I can confirm it's Him. Amazing! RT @MailOnline: Incredible pictures: Couple finds face of Jesus in a fried egg

Sadly, however, as any user of the service knows, it's all too easy to let yourself get sucked into a pointless feud. And then, before you know it, it's late at night, you know you need to get to bed, yet you're locked in an aggravating and demeaning Twitter-feud with (say) the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, over the doctrine of transubstantiation:

Benedict XVI @Pontifex
.@lambethpalace @JohnSentamu No! FFS, the bread & wine is TRANSFORMED into the body & blood of Christ during the Eucharist. Read St Ignatius

Benedict XVI @Pontifex
.@lambethpalace @JohnSentamu Blocked

Understandably, as a member of an older, pre-web-and-text-messaging generation, the Pope struggled to get to grips with the terminology, and occasionally stumbled:

Benedict XVI @Pontifex
Jesus has LOL for you all

And then there was that embarrassing moment that his account was hijacked by spammers:

Benedict XVI @Pontifex
READ THIS before you pick a religion! Achieve salvation using this one weird trick discovered by a mom

But all in all: a good week. At least he didn't retweet tweets from people complimenting him, or edit his bio to describe himself as a "dreamer", or post updates saying "FCO > LHR > JFK" like anybody would care – even though they actually might have cared, in the case of the Pope.

True, we'd probably all have a pretty good first week on Twitter if we had an employee of Twitter standing by specifically to help us get things right. And personally, I would have preferred a few Instagrammed pictures of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, filtered so as to make it look like a venerable, aged masterpiece. Or perhaps a video of the Pope's dog behaving in an unexpectedly human way? Or an infographic? Because who doesn't love an infographic.

But cut the guy some slack. Nobody's infallible.