Looking for more on @Pontifex resignation
Yesterday morning, as is often the case, I was working away on something with my Twitter feed running in the background. For me, the news about the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI broke through social media. This seems appropriate, since it is only a couple of months since he famously became the first Pope to tweet. Yesterday morning the ‘wires’ were awash with tweets directing me to the resignation speech, to the official Vatican statement, and to various news account of the events. There were also one or two jokes about the correlation between joining Twitter and resigning.
By the later part of yesterday, and on into this morning, it has been a different story. Twitter’s comedians have got to work with a vengeance. #whatthepopedoesnext appears to be a favorite hashtag, and there are others in similar vein. I have smiled at the tweets, but I feel like I am missing out. As a Christian the news of the Pope’s resignation is of interest to me, but I don’t know how it feels. Do my Roman Catholic friends feel all at sea (no pun intended), excited about the possibility of change, or disappointed? I often rely on Twitter to take the pulse of the patient when the print and broadcast news only show me a photo. On this occasion I am disappointed. It might be that Twitter is not the place for a grown-up conversation on such things – but that has rarely been my experience.
Does anybody else feel the same?