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The Pope's Twitter account will be @pontifex and will start on December 12, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Vatican representatives announced. The news of the 85-year-old tweeting came out weeks ago, but officials finally revealed the account's name and that it will be launched on the Marian feast day, which they said was a coincidence. But instead of informing people of his favorite band and other trivia, the Pope’s goal will be to impart spiritual messages to people around the globe. Greg Burke, who was recently appointed media advisor to the Holy See's Secretary of State, explained that the name was chosen because pontifex means both “Pope and bridge builder,” and the Holy Father desires to reach out to everyone with the initiative. On the first day, Pope Benedict will personally tweet, but after that assistants will tweet content he approves. "They will be his words and no one will be putting words in his mouth," Burke explained. "My personal input will be to see that it happens as often as possible.” The Pope’s account is expected to be launched at around noon, after the weekly general audience, and the inaugural day will feature answers to a handful of chosen questions related to faith, in honor of the ongoing Year of Faith. The account will include tweets in seven languages besides English. Those languages are Spanish, Arabic, German, Polish, French, Portuguese and Italian. Archbishop Celli noted that most Twitter users are aged 18 to 34, and that the Pope wants to better engage with that segment of the population. Pope Benedict's English-language Twitter account had 158,000 followers as of Monday evening at 6:30 p.m. Rome time. I want to encourage everyone to become a follower and make this the number twitter account in the world.

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