Pope Benedict XVI already had hundreds of thousands of followers on his new Twitter account on Tuesday, just a day after it was unveiled and more than a week before any actual tweets appear.

The English-language version of the @pontifex handle had more than 365,000 followers, up from 2,400 at the time of the announcement on Monday. The numbers still represent only a tiny fraction of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics.

Papally-approved tweets will begin next week just in time for Christmas celebrations, as the Catholic Church tries to reach a wider audience and harness social media to woo the Internet generation.

"The first tweets will be answers to questions sent to the pope on matters of faith. The public can start sending them now," said Greg Burke, a senior communications adviser to the Vatican.

An introductory message on the account based in "Vatican City" read: "Welcome to the official Twitter page of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI."

"Pontifex" is a Latin word meaning "pontiff," the pope's official title.

Benedict will only follow his own account in other languages for the moment and there are no plans for a Facebook account yet, Burke said, adding that "Twitter can be more effective than Facebook in passing on the Pope's message."

The tweets will be in Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish and more languages could be added in future.

Burke, a former correspondent for US channel Fox News brought in by the Vatican in June to overhaul its public-relations operation, said the pope's Twitter account would create "a free market of ideas, and that is good."

It would serve up "pearls of wisdom coming from the heart of the pope," he said, though the 140-character messages will not be written by the pope himself but by Vatican officials who will then submit them to him for approval.

AFP