Benedict XVI has his own Twitter account, pontifex, from which he will send a first tweet on December 12th: the Vatican is open to this new way for the immediate transmission of the Catholic message to millions of users, the majority of whom are a younger global audience.

“Social media are real places of emotion where people share their lives, their best and worst desires, their questions and their answers,” he said.

The German Pope, Joseph Ratzinger, who has made the “New Evangelization” of dechristianized societies a priority, has displayed a positive approach to new means of communication and modernizing the Vatican media.