Pope Benedict XVI joined Twitter on Monday night and became an instant hint in cyberspace - coincidentally in time for the announcement of a baby for Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge which has also sent the world's twitterati into overdrive.
But without even sending a tweet, His Holiness has almost 300,000 followers at the time of publishing this article.
Within seconds of opening his account he had more than 2,000 followers and 12 hours later there were 275,875. By way of comparison Kevin Rudd - one of Australia's most popular Twitter identities - had more than 1.75 million followers as of Tuesday morning.
One of the first to welcome him was another (self-styled) world leader, Sepp Blatter, President of world football's governing body FIFA (@SeppBlatter) who tweeted "Welcome to twitter @pontifex. Honoured to be sharing this platform with such exalted company."
Tweeting as @pontifex (the Latin word for Pontiff), the 85-year-old Pope is due to send his first tweet on 12th December during a question and answer session about faith. The Pope also has the same Twitter handle of @pontifex in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Polish and Arabic.
The Editor of Australian Catholics magazine Michael McVeigh welcomed the new account.
"With a click of a button on his mobile phone, he'll be able to reach more people than were at World Youth Day in Sydney in 2008," Mr McVeigh told AAP.
He expects Pope Benedict XVI to offer his followers spiritual guidance.
"I wouldn't expect to see updates on what the Pope has had for breakfast this morning," he added.
"The Church has to be where the people are, and today that means connecting with them on social media."
His staff are expected to send most of his tweets, but only with prior papal approval.
The Pope instantly received Twitter's blue verification tick - marking him out from the plethora of fake papal accounts.
It appears unlikely Pope Benedict will open a Facebook page any time soon.
Vatican media adviser Greg Burke told a press conference on Monday night that "Twitter can be more effective than Facebook in passing on the Pope's message".
He added: "The Pope is not going to be walking around with a Blackberry or an iPad and no one is going to be putting words into the Pope's mouth. He will tweet what he wants to tweet."
You can sign-up to Twitter and connect with the Pope at www.twitter.com/Pontifex
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