Pope Francis is often quoted in newspapers and Vatican press releases, but a good Papal sound bite can always be found on @Pontifex, his Twitter account.
As John Allen Jr. of The Boston Globe remarked in our recent Gallagher Lecture, “This is a great pope for Twitter.” The social networking service supports 255 million monthly active users in 35 languages. The Holy Father can send sage words to the faithful in brief, 140-character tweets. To the Vatican, this is far from novelty. Pope Francis now has 4.1 million Twitter followers.