Sen. Grassley welcomes Pope Benedict to Twitter

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Monday welcomed the pope to Twitter, predicting he will find the microblogging service "useful and interesting."

Welcome to Twitter Pope Benedict. U will find it useful and interesting

— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) December 3, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI will begin tweeting as @pontifex on Dec. 12. The Vatican announced the pope would be joining Twitter earlier this year, and held a press conference to announce his official handle on Monday.

Unlike Grassley, the pope will not send most of his own tweets. The pope's tweets will be sent in multiple languages, and he will sign off on tweets drafted by aides, according to reports from the press conference.

Grassley, a prolific tweeter known for his creative use of abbreviations in order to fit into Twitter's 140 characters, has sometimes been accused of tweeting in an unknown language, but typically tweets in English.

"The pope's presence on Twitter is a concrete expression of his conviction that the Church must be present in the digital arena," the Vatican said in a statement. 

The pope's official Twitter account follows the Vatican's cautious acceptance of social media. The Vatican has called social networks such as Twitter "a great opportunity" but cautioned that users should not allow the virtual world to make them "less present" in the real one.

The account name was selected to highlight the pope's desire to build bridges to "everyone," including those online, according to Vatican representatives at the press conference.

The pope's first tweets next week will be answers to questions submitted with the hashtag #askpontifex, according to Reuters.

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