Pope’s Twitter Account Closing After Inexplicable Year of Hype

The Catholic God allegedly dictated an entire Holy Bible to his Jewish and early Christian followers before vanishing from this planet forever, but God’s chosen leader of His church in Rome will be closing down the @Pontifex Twitter account less than three months after beginning to use the free social networking service. The inexplicable hullabaloo began in 2011, when Joseph Ratzinger sat in his flowing silken robes and tapped out a tweet on an iPad. But, like so many people who fail to make a splash on Twitter the first time, he drifted away and then started another Twitter account at the end of 2012 — this time documented by immense news coverage.

After just 36 lousy tweets, the dream is over — for Benedict’s 1.6 million followers on his English-language Twitter feed and probably everyone else, too:

At the same time as Pope Benedict XVI leaves office on February 28, his Twitter presence as @Pontifex will also come to an end, according to Vatican Radio. The news may come as a sad blow to the more than 2 million people who’ve signed up to follow his tweets in nine languages since his account was launched with fanfare two-and-a-half months ago.

The new pope will only use Vine, in ways that will chill the soul.