BY Ian Dunn | December 3 | 
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New Evangelisation @pontifex
Pope Benedict XVI reaches out to new kind of followers, will begin tweeting on Dec 12 in Q&A
The Pope is to begin sending Twitter messages using the handle @pontifex as his personal account,
A Vatican spokesman said Pope Benedict XVI wanted to ‘reach out to everyone’ with tweets translated into eight languages.
The first tweet from his account, whose name means both Pope and builder of bridges, is expected on December 12.
Last year, the Pope sent his first tweet from a Vatican account to launch the Holy See’s new information portal.
“We are going to get a spiritual message,” Greg Burke, senior media advisor to the Vatican said. “The Pope is not going to be walking around with a Blackberry or an iPad and no-one is going to be putting words into the Pope’s mouth. He will tweet what he wants to tweet.”
The Pope will be using a question-and-answer format for his first Twitter session, focusing on answering questions about faith in 140 characters. The Vatican has invited people to start sending in questions ahead of time for the Pope to answer.
The tweets are expected to highlight messages from his weekly general audience, Sunday blessings and homilies on key Church holidays as well as papal reaction to world events.
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