If you’re thinking about giving up Twitter for Lent, here’s one reason not to.
This year the Pope will be tweeting Gospel themes or message every day for the next 40 days. His goal is to attract the social media-savvy generation, attempting to get them interested in 140 characters or less.
“Many of the key Gospel ideas are readily rendered in just 140 characters,” Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications Monsignor Paul Tighe tells News.va. “The idea was very simply to try and use Twitter to share with people the essence of the Pope’s message for Lent. Doing it in a way so that people can re-tweet and already people we know from our meeting with bloggers last year are already retweeting.”
Traditionally, during Lent many faithful believers commit to fasting. Others give up some luxuries of modern life. Shouldn’t the Internet be one of them? Plus, consider this: Twitter is more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol. But if the Pope is on there tweeting every day for the next 40 days, it might be better to just keep an eye on the bird instead of flicking it off.
“The pope2you site had phenomenal success at the time of its launch,” says Msgr. Paul Tighe. “Over 5 million hits in the first week or two of its operation…the level of interest was such that we’ve kept it going by focusing on the big themes in the life of the church – Christmas, Easter, World Youth Day…”
And by the way, the Pope is tweeting the same phrases in Italian, German, French, English and Spanish. Soon he will tweet in Portuguese, too.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.
