Pope Francis at the Vatican. Image via Wikimedia Commons
The papal Twitter account is back up and running after being mostly dormant after the resignation of Pope Benedict, and it now bears the name of the new pontiff: Pope Francis.
The account, previously named ‘Pontifex’, began in December, when Pope Benedict began using the microblogging site. While he technically did not tweet himself, he signed off on tweets. It’s likely that is also the case with Pope Francis.
When Pope Benedict resigned the papacy on 28 February, the Vatican suspended the account, leaving it up to the new pope to decide whether or not he wanted to continue using the social network, and from the looks of it, he has.
Shortly after Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio delivered his first address as Pope Francis on 13 March, the Vatican tweeted a message for the first time since Pope Benedict’s resignation: “HABEMUS PAPAM FRANCISCUM” (We have Pope Francis).
Then the account fell silent again, up until this week, when three tweets went out to the account’s more than 2m followers:
Separate Twitter accounts for Pope Francis feature tweets in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Arabic and French.
