March 13, 2013, 10:05 AM —
If the pope is chosen based on amount of tweeting, then Cardinal Odilo Scherer of Brazil is your next pontiff
Image credit: REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini
As we all know, over in Rome the 115 members of the College of Cardinals are hard at work trying to pick a new pope. The official conclave began on Tuesday, at which time the cardinals were required hand over their smartphones, tablets and laptops, because they are not allowed to communicate with the outside world until a new pope is chosen. That means no phone calls, no emailing and, of course, no tweeting.
This got me to wondering just how many of these gents are tweeting in the first place. Also, would tweeting a lot, or having a lot of Twitter followers, be considered a positive or negative when considering whether someone would make a good pope? To find out, I got a list of the cardinals involved in choosing the next pope and looked to see who was even on Twitter, how much they tweeted and how many followers they had.
Based on my research, here now, are your tweeting cardinals:
These cardinals do tweet
| Cardinal | Number of tweets | Number of Twitter followers |
|---|---|---|
| Odilo Pedro Scherer | 1,610 | 30,286 |
| Gianfranco Ravasi | 910 | 44,809 |
| Wilfrid Fox Napier | 816 | 7,043 |
| Lluís Martínez Sistach | 651 | 4,572 |
| Sean Patrick O'Malley | 359 | 15,868 |
| Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez | 313 | 3,712 |
| Dominik Duka | 267 | 636 |
| Timothy Michael Dolan | 235 | 97,222 |
| Norberto Rivera Carrera | 218 | 4,526 |
| Angelo Bagnasco | 113 | 398 |
| Francisco Robles Ortega | 103 | 2,669 |
| Antonio María Rouco Varela | 99 | 677 |
| Rubén Salazar Gómez | 76 | 6,536 |
| Donald William Wuerl | 51 | 1,661 |
| Roger Michael Mahony | 40 | 4,536 |
| Luis Antonio Tagle | 8 | 2,673 |
| Christoph Schönborn | 4 | 381 |
| Cláudio Hummes | 2 | 21 |
| Jean-Louis Tauran | 1 | 594 |
| Tarcisio Bertone | 1 | 486 |
| Willem Jacobus Eijk | 0 | 1,268 |
Notes: Seemingly genuine Twitter accounts that I found for the cardinals who can currently vote for the pope (that is, cardinals under the age of 80). Follower counts valid as of March 12, 2013. Tweet counts shouldn't change until the next pope is elected.
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