It seems religion is catching up with technology as the Pope now has his own Twitter account.

Pope Benedict XVI is to begin tweeting from next week.

The Vatican says the first tweets will be answers to questions sent to the Pope on matters of faith.

The Pontiff will begin tweeting on December 12th with regular tweets sent in 8 languages including English, French, German, Arabic and Polish.

Not his first 'tweet'

His account on the social networking site @Pontifex went live today.

So far he has not tweeted anything but already has thousands of followers.

The Pope has already used the 140 character 'tweet' format when back in June 2011 he launched the Vatican information portal.