April 30, 2013 1 Comment
His Excellency, the (former) Lord Bishop Rt Rev Dr Prof NT Wright is Tweeting on Twitter.
He is now Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Studies at the University of St Andrews.
I noticed this video on his latest tweet: What is the gospel?
January 12, 2013 Leave a comment
CNA:
Pope Benedict’s mass of 2.5 million followers in eight languages during his first month on Twitter has one Vatican priest calling the pontiff’s online presence “a new frontier” of evangelization.
Father Paolo Padrini, a collaborator of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said it is good that the Pope has so many followers, but it even more important that the Pope “seeks to co-exist and share on Twitter.”
“Being present in social media is evangelizing, if just for the fact that he is present with his words,” he told CNA Jan. 11.
“It’s a great joy to see the Pope’s words being disseminated, a joy that is held by all believers.”
Twitter is a social media service that allows users to send out 140-character messages, called “tweets,” to other users who follow their accounts. Followers and others may then share these tweets with their own followers with a “re-tweet.”
The Pope’s first tweet on his personal account went out on Dec. 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Over 64,000 people retweeted his introductory message on his English-language account “Pontifex,” while over 33,000 did so for his Spanish-language account “Pontifex_es.”
As of Jan. 11, he has sent out only 21 tweets. He has shared his favorite memory of Christmas, asked for prayers for an end to the Syria conflict and exhorted others to look to Jesus Christ.
“Following Christ’s example, we have to learn to give ourselves completely,” the Pope said on Twitter Jan. 9. “Anything else is not enough.”
Anyone on Twitter may interact with any other user. Those who have replied to the Pope range from the devout, the appreciative and the inquisitive to the flippant, irreverent and even obscene.
The Pope’s followers are numerous indeed. His English-language account has over 1.4 million subscribers, his Spanish-language account has 575,000 and his Italian-language account has 265,000.
His tweets also go out in French, German, Polish, Portuguese and Arabic. His Arabic-language account is the least popular but still has a respectable 18,000 followers.
By comparison, President Barack Obama has acquired 25 million followers in almost five years. The Dalai Lama has about six million followers on Twitter…
The Pope’s Twitter following quickly surpassed Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who has 72,000 followers.
Claire Diaz Ortiz, Manager of Social Innovation at Twitter, said the company is “thrilled” any time a leader joins their network to connect with his or her followers.
“For the Pope, the decision will be a way for him to better connect his flock of 1.2 billion. That many of those interactions can now take place on Twitter is an inspiring fact for believers everywhere,” she told CNA Jan. 11.
She said that the company has seen a wide range of spiritual leaders form large followings on Twitter.
“Many religious leaders have embraced Twitter to minister to their community, listen to their concerns and share meaningful content,” she said.
Diaz said the Pope’s Twitter debut showed an “incredible emphasis” on internationalization…
Fr. Padrini, who has developed and implemented pontifical council communications initiatives like the website pope2you.net and the iPhone app iBreviary, said that he thinks the Pope’s success on Twitter is “major.”
“It has really warmed my heart. It’s a beautiful thing. But I didn’t have any doubt in my mind that it would be successful,” he said.
Judging from what he has read and heard in informal conversations, he thinks the Pontifical Council for Social Communications must be “very happy” that Pope Benedict’s communications are “more widespread than ever thanks to social media.”
The priest was optimistic about Twitter as a medium, even though little can be said in a single tweet.
“One hundred and forty characters are few but the number of years of Jesus on earth were also few,” he said. “The important thing is to be present and to do so with quality.”
Fr. Padrini added that the Pope has helped inspire others on the internet.
“I feel that because of the Pope’s presence online, all of the work of all of us who work in evangelization online is also valued.”
December 12, 2012 Leave a comment
The website of the Custody enables one to follow the life and reality of the Holy Land, in eight languages: English, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Hebrew and Russian.
From now, the Custody of the Holy Land has also been on Twitter, enabling all to participate in real time and in eight languages the events, celebrations and initiative that occur every day in the Holy Land.
Follow us on Twitter and on our website.
And the Twitter account is here.
December 10, 2012 Leave a comment
Britain’s senior Anglican bishops will be tweeting their Christmas Day sermons for the first time this year.
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the archbishop-designate, as well as clergy and congregations around the UK, will be celebrating the birth of Jesus in a campaign making use of social media.
Worshippers in the Church’s 16,000 parishes are being encouraged to tweet on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
The Archbishops’ Council said it was a chance to spread Christmas “good news”.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Rowan Williams, his soon-to-be successor the Bishop of Durham, the Right Reverend Justin Welby, and the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu will be tweeting.
They are likely to tweet from carol, crib and midnight services, before carrying on into Christmas morning when the highlights of the sermons at Canterbury Cathedral, York Minster and Durham Cathedral will be tweeted.
The campaign will use the hashtag #ChristmasStartsWithChrist.
Rev Arun Arora, of the Archbishops’ Council, said: “This is a brilliant opportunity for parishes to take the good news of the first Christmas out of churches and into people’s lives and homes.”
December 7, 2012 Leave a comment
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has followed the lead of its former prefect, Pope Benedict, and joined Twitter.
December 3, 2012 Leave a comment
Well, almost. His Twitter page is, however, up and running here. @Pontifex
There are various language options too. And yes, you can Tweet him too.
November 9, 2012 Leave a comment
Perhaps you should be? Wise are Church leaders who embrace social media and use it for the good of the Gospel. I once found myself laughing out aloud when I read a certain, err… shall we use that word and say, Church leader (?) in a letter to the people openly condemning blogs and the like. He huffed and puffed – and this while other Church leaders (like the Pope for example) actively encourage their priests to blog (and use other forms of communication and social media) – and all I could think at the time was: Wake up! No wonder his ministry is in disarray…
Anyway, the news I want to share in this post, speaking of the Pope, is that I see he will soon be opening a personal Twitter account. That’s according to Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi:
Pope Benedict XVI will join the Twitter-sphere, tweeting from a personal account along with the world’s celebrities, leaders and ordinary folk.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi made the announcement Thursday, saying details about Benedict’s handle and other information will come when the Vatican officially launches the account, perhaps before the end of the year.
The 85-year-old Benedict sent his first tweet from a Vatican account last year when he launched the Vatican’s news information portal, aimed at the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics. The new Twitter account will be his own, though it’s doubtful Benedict himself will wrestle down his encyclicals, apostolic exhortations and other papal pronouncements into 140-character bites…
March 25, 2012 Leave a comment
Twitter users invited to help choose the new Archbishop of Canterbury.
How progressive. The Telegraph:
Having wrestled with the best way to choose a new leader, the Church of England has decided to use the social networking site Twitter. It will also seek the views of people of all faiths and none, from the Chief Rabbi to Professor Richard Dawkins.
For the first time in history, the long and usually private process will begin with a widespread public consultation, to be finished by the end of May.
The Crown Nominations Commission, which must present the Prime Minister with two possible successors to Dr Rowan Williams, will also ask for contributions from “senior figures in other faiths, the secular world and the life of the nation”.
A spokesman for the Church of England said the invitation would be made through the church press but also through other media including the social networking site Twitter, where the CofE already posts news in nuggets of 140 characters or less. Tweeters and others will be asked to offer names and “views on the needs of the diocese of Canterbury and the wider community”.
This would appear to be good news for the candidates known to be active on Twitter.
The Bishop of Durham, the Rt Rev Justin Welby has 562 followers; the Bishop of Bradford, the Rt Rev Nick Baines, has 3,953; and the early front-runner for the job, the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has 21,558.
One of Dr Sentamu’s most recent posts was to point out that the flag above his palace, Bishopthorne, was being flown at half-mast “to remember our brave soldiers killed in Afghanistan”.
Meanwhile, the latest attempt by Dr Williams to heal divisions within the worldwide Anglican Communion was effectively killed off yesterday…
Rest here.
February 27, 2012 Leave a comment
The Pope is to have his own personal Twitter account, in the Vatican’s latest move towards embracing new technology.
The Holy See denied that it was dumbing down Catholicism by squeezing the wisdom of the gospels into messages of 140 characters or less.
The Vatican is trying to reach out to an increasingly internet-savvy audience and has already established a presence on YouTube and Facebook.
Monsignor Paul Tighe, from the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said that many of the themes contained in the Bible were “readily rendered in just 140 characters”.
“To those who say it’s dumbing down, no, this is entry level, to provoke people’s interest and to invite them then to follow the message and read the text,” he told Vatican Radio.
“Many of the key gospel ideas are readily rendered in 140 characters –this is not the only way the Church speaks but it’s an avenue that is open to us and it’s pithy, succinct and it’s one I think that we’re quite good at.” The Pope’s Twitter account is likely to be @BenedictusPPXVI, the Italian media said.
He is not expected to personally write every message, but he will authorise them before they are sent out by Vatican aides.“Naturally he will approve every message,” said Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, the president of the Pontifical Council.
Exactly when the Pope’s account will be opened still had to be decided, said Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, although he said “the green light” for the project had been given.
The Vatican already has a Twitter presence, @Pope2YouVatican, which Benedict XVI is using to send a tweet once a day throughout the 40 days of Lent, starting on Ash Wednesday.
“The idea was very simply to try and use Twitter to share with people the essence of the Pope’s message for Lent, so over the 40 days of Lent to tweet every day one of the ideas of this message,” Msgr Tighe said…
And why not?
The technology is there. Use it. For good. For spreading the Faith.
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