Pope amassing Twitter followers ahead of first tweet

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- It only took a few hours Monday morning for Pope Benedict XVI to become a big celebrity on Twitter.

The Vatican officially launched the pope's new personal Twitter account Monday morning. His tweets won't start until next week, but he already has over 222,000 followers.

The Vatican chose the Twitter handle @Pontifex, "pope" in Latin.

Benedict won't personally send every message, but he'll have them all his seal of approval before they go out.

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