The first papal tweets will be sent out in Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Arabic and French.

Greg Burke, senior media adviser to the Vatican, said, “We are going to get a spiritual message. The pope is not going to be walking around with a Blackberry or an iPad and no one is going to be putting words into the pope’s mouth. He will tweet what he wants to tweet.”

He said the @Pontifex Twitter name was chosen because it means ‘pope and it also means bridge builder’. Burke said the Pope will tweet, as often as he wants.