The Pope (Image: Twitter.com)

The Catholic Church has had a pretty rough couple of years in terms of popularity. So the clergy must have been thrilled when the pope announced his arrival to Twitter earlier this month.

On December 12th, he tweeted his first message to the world, which sounds like an excerpt from a wily Aunt's last chain email, "Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart."

The Vatican is now bragging about the success of the first heavenly tweet and comparing il papa to Canada's own Holy Father, Justin Bieber.

The Vatican newspaper wrote in Thursday's paper that the pope's first tweet set a "percentage record for re-tweeting." Never heard of that record before, but let's just go with it. Congrats!

Reuters reported that  The Vatican newspaper said that, as of yesterday afternoon, the pope had 2.1 million followers. In actuality, his English speaking account only has 1.2 million and his Spanish speaking account is still hovering around 500,000. The others just don't add up to that reported number.

The Vatican also announced this week that the pope will add Latin and Chinese language accounts to the list of his Twitter personas. A Latin Twitter account? Because nothing says web 2.0 like tweeting exclusively in a dead language.

Can someone put Gary Vaynerchuk on a plane to Vatican City already?