September 17, 2015

The Tweeting Pope: A Sample From @Pontifex

By Kathy Goldgeier

Pope Francis on a 2014 visit to South Korea.

Pope Francis on a 2014 visit to South Korea.

At 78 years old, Pope Francis largely eschews technology. He says he doesn’t watch television any more, and can’t really use a computer. He communicates with the top cardinals by fax machine.

But there’s one social media tool Pope Francis has embraced. He’s a rock star on Twitter. Using the handle @Pontifex, which he inherited from Pope Benedict, he’s said to be the most influential tweeter on the planet.

It’s not that he has the most followers. Among English-language tweeters, Katy Perry and President Obama both have more. But Pope Francis tweets in nine languages, giving him 21 million followers worldwide. And many of those people retweet him. So the Pope’s brief missives can reach as many as 200 million people.

Below is a sampling of the tweets that demonstrate Pope Francis’s vision and his man-of-the-people humility.