Pope Francis urges youth not to waste time using the Internet when he spoke to the 50,000 German altar servers who came to Rome for a pilgrimage. Aside from chatting on the Internet, the Pope also mentioned watching TV soap operas and using products made to advance technology as the things that help people improve their quality of life, but at the same time get in their way of doing what is truly important.
"Our life is made up of time, and time is a gift from God, so it is important that it be used in good and fruitful actions," he said in his speech.
The journey to Rome was supported by the German Bishops' Conference. The pilgrims are composed of thousands of Germans with ages 13 to 27 and altar servers from northern Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Lithuania.
Do not be misunderstood. His Holiness maintains Twitter accounts in nine languages. Former Pope Benedict XVI first used it in 2011. The English language account (@Pontifex) is followed by more than 4 million people. He was even dubbed as the 'Most Influential User on the Planet' by Twiplomacy 2014 (a research on how Twitter is being used by world leaders), as reported by Mail Online.
This is even with the fact that US President Barack Obama (@BarackObama) is the 'Most Followed World Leader" with 43.7 million followers. This is because each of the Pope's tweets is being retweeted close to 17,000 times (10,000 retweets from his Spanish account and 6,462 retweets from his English account) on average. On the other hand, each of Obama's tweets is retweeted on an average of 1,400 times.
He called the Internet as "gift from God". However, the 77-year-old Pontiff cited that the high-speed world of social media also necessitates tenderness, calm, and reflection if we are to make it as the network of people.
