What in God's name (lol) is the pope going to tweet?

The pope has a full-blown social media presence. Will he finally start using emoticons?

I didn’t actually think the world was going to end in December 2012 until I heard the news today that the Pope is tweeting.  Just seems a little coincidental, doesn’t it?  It’s like the pope is offering everyone a limited-time-only extended deathbed conversion deal.  You just have to follow him on Twitter.

Pope Benedict XVI has had a fairly impressive social media presence—you know, for being the pope.  The Vatican got a YouTube channel back in 2008, and in 2009, it launched its Facebook application “pope2You.”  The pope even has an iPhone app—H2Onews, where you can get all your popey news on the go.

But something about the pope being on Twitter just seems so surreal.  (The fact that he has a profile pic is freaking me out a little bit.)  Maybe it’s because public figures on Twitter seem to have a closer connection to their followers.  You can like a celebrity on Facebook and comment on their photo or status update, but on Twitter, you can tweet your favorite celebs and actually elicit responses from them.  Case-in-point: the recent Twitter drama between Chris Brown and Jenny Johnson.  (What?  I don’t know.)

Barack Obama, for example, almost certainly has nothing to do with his own Facebook page, but it’s generally understood that when a tweet from his account is signed “-bo,” that means it’s officially from him.

So it kind of makes you wonder what kinds of tweets the pope is going to send out.  Like, is he going to send out April Fools tweets?  Ex:

Official announcement: women can now take birth control. lol, jk. srsly, don’t. –Pope

Will he do the “bored” tweet?

im so bored : /

That would be amazing if the pope did the slanty face.  Actually, he would probably do the pope emoticon, which would probably look like this:

<+I : /

Or maybe there will be passive-aggressive Twitter drama with the Protestants…

Some people are too lazy to accept consubstantiation <+I : /

Omg, will he send out a Happy Apocalypsmas tweet? 

In case I don’t see you tomorrow, it’s been real.  Jk, nice try Mayans.

(In my fantasy world, the pope isn’t consistent with his grammar or netspeak.)

So now we just need an official pope meme.  Actually, it looks like there’s one being considered on Know Your Meme right now, but there are lots of memes comparing the likenesses of Pope Benedict XVI and Darth Sidious.  It’s pretty uncanny, actually…

Image source: vh1.com