Pope Benedict XVI will launch his personal Twitter account, @pontifex (‘pope’, in Latin) next week, with Twitter social innovation director Claire Diaz Ortiz laying claim to “the most important religious leader in the world”.

In his message for World Communications Day in January, the Pope set the stage for his foray into the twittersphere, acknowledging the power of the social networking site: “In concise phrases, often no longer than a verse from the Bible, profound thoughts can be communicated – as long as those taking part in the conversation do not neglect to cultivate their own inner lives.”

The Pope will begin tweeting on December 12 from accounts in eight languages, and The Vatican says he will be selecting the messages to tweet. Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Monsignor Paul Tighe, told Vatican Radio this week, “When the Holy Father is working on sermons or talks, he’ll give explicit attention to how to formulate a shorter message that will be retweeted in his name…it’s really an entry level of engagement.”

But Tighe says, despite the arms-length tweeting, @pontifex is still symbolically important.

“This is the head of the Church going into a new digital arena to share his words and ideas…it’s an encouragement to those already present using Twitter and other forms of social media reach an even wider group of people.”

Already, The Pope has 453,666 Twitter followers, without having made a single tweet (at time of writing). People can send questions to the Pope prior to December 12, some of which he will attempt to answer live during his weekly general audience.

Newsmakers around the world are placing bets on whether the Pope’s new social media push will break any Twitter records. The UK’s The Telegraph asks whether the Pope can overtake Lady Gaga’s 32 million followers– the highest number of followers on Twitter right now. With the Dalai Lama as the Pope’s “closest religious rival” at 5 million followers, it doesn’t look promising.

Who else is on Twitter? Here are some of the most popular Christian tweeters right now:

• @JoyceMeyer (1,548,807 followers)
• @joelosteen (1,152,737 followers)
• @maxlucado (599,472 followers)
• @johnpiper (390,888 followers)
• @pastormark (306,484 followers)
• @andystanley (230,218 followers)