Pope Tweets: His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI joins the twittersphere

With the news that Pope Benedict XVI has joined the 'twittersphere', there is much anticipation about what @pontifex (his English-language Twitter username) will be using the social networking site to communicate. While that remains uncertain, one thing is clear: there is nothing new about this Papal effort to reach the masses through their latest medium of choice, says Susan Kambalu.

Almost fifty years ago, Pope Paul VI encouraged Catholics to take account of "the signs of the times" in one of the Church's Constitutional documents, Gaudium et Spes (The Joys and Hopes, 1965):

"The Church has always had the duty of scrutinising the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel. Thus, in language intelligible to each generation, she can respond to the perennial questions which men ask about this present life and the life to come, and about the relationship of the one to the other. We must therefore recognise and understand the world in which we live, its explanations, its longings, and its often dramatic characteristics."

Our current Pontiff has obviously been taking note. But anyone hoping to see Pope Benedict tweeting about his TV preferences or favourite football team will probably be disappointed. Catholics are called to be counter-cultural, so the Pope will avoid adding to the mundane chatter which characterises so much of Twitter's output. Equally, there are very clear guidelines about the types of communications that the Pope would use to make official pronouncements - so no one should expect him to invest Twitter with the authority of a more formal encyclical.

I suspect Pope Benedict will take a different approach. Launching the Year of Faith a short time ago, Pope Benedict XVI wrote an apostolic letter called Porta Fidei (The Door of Faith, 2011), in which he encouraged Catholics "to rediscover the joy of believing and the enthusiasm for communicating the faith". Many people enthusiastically communicate all sorts of things on Twitter; what better way for the Pope to set an example than by embracing social networking as a means of spreading the joy of faith and worship? That which he shares on a weekly basis with thousands in St Peter’s can be shared with tens of millions through the power and reach of the Internet.

We at CAFOD are suitably excited at the prospect. As well as our @CAFOD Twitter account, many volunteers, staff members and partners tweet regularly about issues of global justice, and find daily inspiration from our @CAFODPrayer account. We look forward to retweeting the Pope's thoughts and prayers during this Year of Faith, and we hope you will circulate them to your own networks of friends. In Lumen Gentium (The Light of the Nations, 1964), lay people are called "to make the Church present" and to be "a witness and a living instrument of the mission of the Church itself". Using Twitter is one way to be an online witness, an opportunity to bring issues of global justice to the attention of those who might not be attending Mass or other formal church events regularly.

So if you haven't joined us on Twitter yet, why not join today? You can get daily prayer updates from @CAFODPrayer, and @CAFOD will retweet interesting posts from those who represent different areas of CAFOD's work. (If you prefer Facebook, you can "like" our CAFOD page or our CAFOD Great Generation page for young people.) We're still not sure what the Pope will be tweeting about and at the moment he's only following himself (albeit in eight different languages)... but follow us and we may follow you back; tell us what you're doing in your parish or school and you may get a retweet. See you on Twitter!

Susan Kambalu works in CAFOD's education team as INSET coordinator.