For a man who had not yet sent a single tweet, more than a million followers on Twitter was quite a coup. But that was the number that Pope Benedict had racked up as he hit the button on his tablet and launched his hugely anticipated Twitter account @pontifex.
"Dear friends," he wrote, "I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart."
The message – in eight languages on the pope's eight Twitter accounts – came shortly before midday, and was due to be followed during the day by tweeted answers to questions selected from those sent by the faithful recently.
Benedict made his Twitter debut during his weekly audience at the Vatican, with a group of young people gathered round him, possibly to ensure the 85-year-old pontiff did not hit delete by mistake.
"There was a slight uncertainty on his part, I have to say," said Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.
The first answer followed shortly after the audience. To the question: "How can we celebrate the Year of Faith better in our daily lives?", the pope responded: "By speaking with Jesus in prayer, listening to what he tells you in the Gospel and looking for him in those in need."
Lombardi said the pope had been determined to get on to Twitter.
"We have seen how much information and how many voices are out there and we wanted to be present and introduce a positive and religious message," he said.
The Vatican has had to sift through a large number of irreverent and offensive tweeted questions in the runup to Wednesday's event – with references to clerical child abuse just one of the minefields it has tiptoed through to get the pope online.
But the papal tweet bandwagon has moved on without blinking, helped by the likes of Greg Burke, the lively former Fox News reporter who has been appointed media adviser to the Vatican's secretariat of state, and who has said the pope will not be following anyone on Twitter and is clearly "not the kind of person who will be checking his tweets at lunch".
The Vatican has also made clear the pope will not actually be typing in his tweets and that officials will compose them on his behalf, albeit using words from his speeches.
The Vatican has also been given careful consultancy by Twitter itself, which was extremely keen to pull in yet another hugely influential microblogger, following the popularity of the Dalai Lama and Barack Obama.
The social media website reportedly has a unit of 20 staffers who encourage prominent figures to set up accounts, offering them security against fake tweeters and gaffe-avoidance training.
One result was the almost immediate cancellation of a fake papal account set up last month by serial mischief maker Tommaso Debenedetti, who has set up various fake Twitter accounts imitating world leaders and celebrities and said he had never been cancelled so fast.
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