The Pope’s official Twitter account, @pontifex, celebrates its 10th anniversary this Monday since it was first published on December 12, 2012 by then-Pontiff Benedict XVI and has almost 54 million followers in nine languages.
“Dear friends, it is with joy that I join you on Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless you all from my heart,” Benedict XVI wrote in his first message in Italian.
The pontifical presence on the social network, defined by the then papal spokesman Federico Lombardo as “an ecclesial and not a personal fact”, was launched in eight languages (Italian, English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Portuguese and Polish), to which Latin was added in January 2013.
According to the statistics of the specialized site Il Sismógrafo, until this Sunday the nine accounts added 53,528,097 followers.
The most followed account is the one that writes in Spanish, with 18,972,230 followerswhile the English one has 18,926,072 “followers” and the Italian one 5,317,544.
After the series of tweets that Benedict XVI inaugurated, Pope Francis later opened an official account on Instagram, in addition to launching monthly videos on the YouTube platform.
