Digital white smoke signals may soon be rising on Twitter.
The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI will begin tweeting from a personal Twitter account, possibly before year's end.
This clearly won’t rival Pope Benedict XVI’s first appearance on the St. Peter's balcony –- or even his first appearance on Twitter. But it should give him a far more apostolic follower count than his Vatican account (some 28,000 faithful).
The 85-year-old Benedict first tweeted from that Vatican account last year. That's when the Vatican launched a news portal.
No one was really a fan of the handle @Pope2YouVatican. No word yet on the new handle. But feel free to let loose with suggestions in the comments.
The Vatican says the Twitter account will belong to Benedict (though it's likely he will write 140-character messages in longhand and let someone else do the actual tweeting).
This year the pope tweeted one message a day for the 40 days of Lent. Hopefully he won't give up Twitter for Lent next year.
Twitter could not be immediately reached for comment.
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