Video: The Pope blesses faithful with first tweet The tweet was sent when the 85-year-old pope tapped on a touch screen at the end of his weekly general audience in the Vatican in front of thousands of people. The Pope's English Twitter profile, using the handle @pontifex is already being followed by over 800,000 people. According to the Vatican, Benedict is unlikely to follow other Twitter users and will not be engaging in debate with people who send him messages.