Pope Purgatory: How To Save Yourself From Damnation By Following Pope Francis On Twitter [VIDEO]

The Vatican has joined the social media world by creating a Twitter page for the Pope.

"What's new about this announcement is the migration onto Twitter, and to say that's it's possible to follow these events in Brazil on World Youth Day through an electronic medium rather than going there yourself," said Patrick Hornbeck, chair of the department of Theology at the University of Fordham in New York.

Here are four things to know about the Pope joining twitter:

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1. The Pope will be joining Twitter and his followers will get to follow the week's events during World Youth Day from July 23 to July 28. This is ideally for those devotees who cannot afford to travel to Brazil.

"This Pope has done a remarkable job of demonstrating how well aware he is of the way in which his younger audience, his younger followers, follow things and I think it totally makes sense that young Catholics would be much more likely to participate via social networking and social media rather than through traditional ways," said Hornbeck.

2. The idea behind getting a Twitter is that followers can reduce the amount of time in purgatory.

"The notion of indulgence is that you've already been forgiven for your sin, because you've gone to confession, at least in theory, but what it does is reduce the amount of time you have to spend in purgatory after you die to work off that sin," said Hornbeck.

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3. The Twitter decree was issued by the Apostolic Penitentiary and has asked priests to make themselves availables for those who want Indulgence.

4. The Pope has close to 2.7 million followers on Twitter. Follow Pope Francis @Pontifex.

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