Pope Benedict XVI's personal Twitter account has attracted more than 150,000 followers in just a few hours, including 10,000 followers in under one hour.

The account @Pontifex will go live on 12 December, the Vatican said this morning.

The Pope's account "follows" seven others - the German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, French and Arabic versions of his own account.

The Vatican invited people to send in questions for the Pope, whose first series of tweets will take the form of a question-and-answer session.

The Vatican's communications adviser Greg Burke told the press conference that the Pope would tweet "as often as he wants".