After having joined the popular microblogging service Twitter earlier this month, Pope Benedict XVI dispatched his first tweet on Wednesday; following it up with four more short messages, mostly about Jesus.

Addressing his over 838,000 Twitter followers, while sitting at a desk in the Vatican hall and dispatching his first tweet from an iPad, in the presence of media and thrilled onlookers, the 85-year-old Pope said, using the handle @Pontifex: "Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart."

The Wednesday-posted first message by the Pope - who intends responding to questions about faith, from the users of the #AskPontifex hastag - witnessed more than 42,000 retweets on Wednesday itself; along with favorites by 14,000 people.

With the Vatican having already revealed that the Pope will be using Twitter to connect with the 1.2 billion followers of the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope's tweets will be sent in eight languages, each with a different feed. The languages which the Pope will tweet in include English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Polish, Portuguese, and Arabic.

According to a statement by a Vatican official, the Pope will neither follow anyone on Twitter, nor will he retweet messages. The official also said that the Pope's Twitter messages - like everything else written by him - will be part of the church's teachings, except that they will not be infallible.