With more than one billion followers, Pope Benedict XVI is now tweeting from his own personal account.

Reverend Federico Lombardi says the Vatican will officially launch a personal account for the Pope possibly by the end of the year, and the country has yet to disclose exactly what the Pope’s Twitter (News - Alert) handle will be.

There are more than 1.1 billion Catholics in the world, and the Vatican felt it would be a good idea to have the Pope send his first tweet to launch its news portal. And though the new Twitter account for the Pope will be his own personal account, it’s unlikely he’ll tweeting papal decrees from it.

Since the 85-year-old Pope prefers to write in longhand instead of using a computer, it is doubtful his tweets will be directly from him, but rather from an assistant who has had the tweets blessed by the Pope.

Pope Benedict XVI now joins a long list of celebrity and A-List users who are also on Twitter. Lindsay Lohan, P. Diddy, Ryan Seacrest, Britney Spears, Kim Kardashian, John Mayer, Spencer Pratt and Paris Hilton are but a small few of the names currently on the famous microblogging social network. Some celebrities, such as Ashton Kutcher, seem to have a Twitter account just for the sake of having a Twitter account to be like other celebrities; they seldom send out Tweets.

Other celebrity tweeters, like Oprah Winfrey, use Twitter as a way to promote themselves or endorse products or businesses they’re involved with.

There are several businesses that also use celebrities to endorse their products on Twitter and to reach the multitudes of people that follow celebrities. Twitter has clearly become an important part for many industries as an advertising tool.

The impact of an announcement from the Vatican the Pope will soon be tweeting only shows the extent of Twitter’s magnetic appeal.