The late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was the first Pontiff in the history of the Catholic Church to have an account on the social network Twitter.

The Holy Father’s account, @pontifex, was officially launched on December 3, 2012. But it would not be until nine days later, on Dec. 12, that Benedict XVI made his first post.

“Dear friends, I joyfully join you via Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless you all from my heart,” was the late Pope Emeritus’ historic first tweet.

Accounts were opened in English, Italian, French, Polish, German, Portuguese, Arabic and Latin.

After the resignation of Benedict XVI from the pontificate, the Twitter accounts in his different languages passed to Pope Francis.

Currently, the Holy Father’s English Twitter account has more than 18.9 million followers. Between the nine accounts, they total more than 53 million followers.

Twitter, developed by Jack Dorsey and launched in 2006, currently has more than 368 million active users and is owned by billionaire Elon Musk.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News.