The pope is now on twitter!

[hope rainbow]

Pope Benedict XIV sent his first tweet earlier this week under the user-name Pontifex, which is Latin for “bridge builder.”

The first message was:

Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart.

The pope's feed quickly accumulated 1,1 million followers. Wow!
social medias have become a necessity for the spiritual leaders to reach to all of us that drawn in mundane activities such as Twitter.

More messages:

How can faith in Jesus be lived in a world without hope?


We can be certain that a believer is never alone. God is the solid rock upon which we build our lives and his love is always faithful

see here:
https://twitter.com/Pontifex

[Positive Change]

Looks like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon huh. Now even the Pope has to change and move with the times. An age old institution coming to grips with what needs to be done.

Social media is indeed a far reaching medium. Surely the creators of this incredible site can testament to this phenomena. If there is anything positive from this samsaric world, I think social media (however warped that may sound) is it!

I wonder who will be next to enter the cyber world!

[dondrup]

There are so many inventions created everyday.  Internet is one of the most useful inventions ever created by mankind.  And Social Media has since become a phenomenon on the internet.  It is a necessity at this age that every segment of the society are into it.  Communication has become easier since the advent of internet for the people around the World.    It is not surprising that spiritual organisations tap into this technology like Twitter to disseminate information.  Pope Benedict XIV must have realised the importance of using this Twitter and doesn't want to be left behind because many other spiritual leaders are using it too. 

[Aurore]

Here are some spiritual leaders who inspires change in people and is on twitter. Amazingly Dalai Lama is huge in social media. People love him! On top of that, Buddhism just makes so much sense!

Dalai Lama - 5,743,797 followers
Deepak Chopra - 1,258,343 followers
Eckhart Tolle - 193,802 followers
Pope - 1,186,786 followers
Osho - 67,854 followers
Thich Nhat Hanh - 107,015 followers
Wayne Dyer - 230, 465 followers
Louise Hay - 134, 221 followers
Rhonda Byrne - 9,507 followers

[Tenzin K]

No surprise.
Social media is the fastest medium to reach the mass and becoming one of the most important and effective medium to disseminate information. This marketing tools is just getting more popular and convenient for the current era people to retrieve and broadcast information.

My opinion there is no right or wrong in promoting spiritual in social media and the most important is that able to help the people out there that are on the same technology to look for their answer.

[ratanasutra]

Social media is an effective way to reach to uncountable people in such a short time therefore today not only the celebrities whom have a huge number of followers but also the leader of religions too as we can see from an information from Aurore.
And as expected The Dalai lama has huge number of followers, sure many people love to know what he is doing or love to receive and read his quote via twitter..

[buddhalovely]

The pope sent his first tweet last year from a Vatican account to launch the Holy See's news information portalThe Vatican's communications adviser Greg Burke told a press conference that the handle @Pontifex was chosen for the pope's personal account because it not only means pope in Latin, but also bridge-builder, suggesting unity. How often will the pope tweet? Burke said, "as often as he wants."

[ilikeshugden]

Wow! This is a very interesting thing. Even the pope is going onto social medias like Twitter. It is very nice to know the Pope can be contactable through twitter. I think it is extremely good if religious masters or visionaries of peace be more outgoing to reach out for supporters and such. I hope the pope will have a happy life and more people will benefit from his illuminating compassion. I am a Buddhist of course but I feel that all religions should be equal and united with KINDNESS.

[Jessie Fong]

Social media is one of the most effective marketing tools nowadays. All it needs is to just press that SEND button and your message goes round the world.

If the Pope can reach the world through Twitter, think what impact it would have when we actively promote Dorje Shugden via social media as well.

Thank you to the Tech-savvy brains who came out with the technology.

[rossoneri]

Internet is one of the greatest invention by men. With internet everything become faster and more convenient which ultimately changing our life without we knowing we already been looped into the world of internet. And with this technology many of us became depended to it. Without a cell phone for a day seems like going to a no mens land for a week or so. With social media we are updated with news around the world almost instantly no matter which part of the world you are from.

So it is no surprise that even The Pope is in the social media world right now, but what i am surprise is that only now he started using it. Well, he's a busy man.

[bambi]

Its about time! There is no excuse to learn no matter how old you are. Now the Pope can reach to many of his followers and give teachings. Everything is so convenient nowadays and in time it will be more advanced. Thank you Aurore for the figures and yes, Buddhism makes so much sense to me.  Even I am addicted to social media. So much to learn and its just a click away...

[brian]

I wonder who else is still not in the so called social media bandwagon. Must have been a great hit using twitters and facebooks as a point to send out messages across. It is never a doubt that social media is playing an important role in diseminating spiritual belief and others to keep updated online. So I am not surprised when I hear the pope is on twitter as well. Even professional footballers are on twitter as well. It makes the world even smaller now. Technology can be good to us if it is used properly and it is not fair to say technology actually made human becoming more degenerated rather than being deem as a help to human mankind.

[fruven]

It is definitely a good news. It will create a good image if we are not afraid of being transparent and work on our weaknesses. The Pope is showing a good example just like what the Dalai Lama had done. Embracing the technology and using it as tool for the good of others.

By the way the Internet is invented by humankind but it was invented for military purposes.  How ironic. Anyway keep the information flow free.

[Barzin]

This is actually much needed.  If one has full knowledge and not accessible, all the knowledge would be gone and wasted.  Therefore a lot of spiritual leaders have to work in time for the younger generation.  We are living in the age of information overloaded, too much distraction.  One minute you read about something, the next minute is something else.  Therefore it is vital to spread dharma teachings in this way.  What would be better then to boost your day taking a 5 minute out to read an inspiration tweet?  That might just get you through the day!

[Big Uncle]

I think that if one want to make it in today's world, whether it is for commercial and spiritual reasons, one have to engage in the social media to reach out to the masses. From this statistics, it is pretty obvious how powerful social media has become. Hence, it is no wonder that the future gods of commerce are all related directly or indirectly with social media and the Internet. Hence, the secret to the fall of the Dorje Shugden ban may lie with the power of social media.