Five million following Pope on Twitter

05 April, 2013 - Pope Francis with his simplicity, touching gestures and persuasive inspiration is proving a hit as an effective communicator even on the social network. In less than four weeks after his election, he already has over 5 million followers at his Twitter account, @ Pontifex, in nine languages, including Arabic and Latin. Pursuing the impetus given to the task of evangelization through the new media by his predecessor, Benedict XVI, Pope Francis reactivated the twitter account, which was inaugurated only in December. The account went dormant with the resignation of Pope Benedict, Feb. 28, and came alive again with the election of Pope Francis, March 13. Four days later, March 17, he posted his first tweet: '' Dear friends, I thank you and ask you to continue to pray for me.'' Since then, in the wave of euphoria following the election of a new pope, the popular micro-blogging social account of the pontiff also registered a surge in followers. The number of people who 'follow' the Pope in fact doubled from 2.5 million since the last tweet of Pope Benedict to 5 million currently. The boom has been evident particularly among English and Spanish speaking followers for the Catholic Church’s first South American Pope. As of Friday, there were 2.28 million English speaking followers, whereas Spanish-speaking followers numbered 1.6 million. (Source: Ansa)