Twitter is known for its spontaneity, with off-the-cuff tweets that can become a source of regret. That's not likely to be the case with @pontifex, the pope's new Twitter handle.
The Vatican has announced that the long-awaited papal Twitter account will open for business at midday on 12 December, leaving little room for random ramblings by the pope, and will kick off with a Q&A session to show it truly is his voice.
"With the Obama White House, a tweet will come out every now and then that is actually written by the president," said Monsignor Paul Tighe, secretary of the pontifical council for social communication (PCSC). "Here, every tweet will be seen and approved by the pope."
The papal account is the latest attempt by the Vatican to tackle new media, with a YouTube channel and the Pope2you website already set up. Benedict XVI sent his first tweet from the Vatican's Twitter feed last year.
From Monday the Pope App will be available free from the Apple Store, offering alerts of pending homilies as well as video footage from a series of webcams around the Vatican.
Father Claudio Maria Celli, the head of the PCSC, has likened tweets to the gospels, but warned on Monday that the pope's 140-character missives would not be "dogmatic positions", saying: "A conversation is one thing, an encyclical is another". Followers would get "pearls of wisdom", he said.
The Vatican press officer, Father Federico Lombardi, said Benedict would start by tweeting excerpts from his weekly general audiences in English, with translations in seven other languages, including Arabic, being offered.
The pope, 85, would not be tapping out the tweets or hitting the send button, nor would he be following other tweeters, said Greg Burke, media adviser to the Vatican's secretariat of state. "He is not the kind of person who will be checking his tweets at lunch," he said. "But the tweets will be the pope's words."
The pontiff was waking the rest of the Vatican up to new media, said Burke, who said an 83-year-old priest had told him: "If the pope is going on Twitter then I had better too."
An official from Twitter who was present for the launch of the account said Twitter had actively courted the Vatican. "As a company it is important to have influential leaders and he is possibly the most influential religious leader," said Claire Diaz-Ortiz, head of social innovation, who said the pope's account had already drawn 14,000 followers minutes after the handle had been announced.
Twitter was apparently taking care of its latest customer on Monday. An Italian tweeter who has successfully impersonated a series of famous people said he had drawn 1,484 followers to a fake papal Twitter feed, @_pontifex, only to see it shut down after an hour. "That was an incredibly rapid reaction by Twitter," said Tommaso Debenedetti.
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