The Twiplomacy study also dedicates a chapter to the presence of Vatican institutions on the fastest growing social network of the moment.
That politicians are good at talking but not so great at listening is a well known fact. But it looks like world leaders have also contaminated web 2.0’s social networking world with their “bad habits”. 
This is according to Twiplomacy, a study carried out by global communications agency Burson-Marsteller and published at the end of July, which looks at how the world’s big players interact among between them and with the public on Twitter’s big global arena.
The study, which analysed the accounts of 264 world leaders from 125 countries, reveals that not only are the world’s most powerful men not very responsive to their followers but they do not even follow each other much: basically, not only do they not listen to their own citizens but they do not listen to those of equal rank either.
For example, the absolute “super star” among the politicians on Twitter, the U.S. President Barack Obama, only follows three other world leaders (the British, Norwegian and Russian prime ministers).
The study contains a chapter on the Vatican’s activity on Twitter. It seems to have the same handicaps most other leaders and global institutions have: little interactivity, automated and purely institutional tweets, no social involvement using the new tool – to the point that the Vatican’s official accounts do not follow any other Twitter users.
The six Vatican_va accounts (one for each of the languages available on the Holy See’s main portal: English, Italian, French, Spanish, German and Portuguese) are followed by approximately 7 thousand people and tweet about once every two days.
The same is true of Pope Benedict XVI’s official account, @BenedictusPPXVI (not to be confused with @Pope2YouVatican, a social networking experiment managed by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, which has almost 30 thousand followers).
Ever since its creation last 21 February, the papal Twitter account has not even added a photo of Benedict XVI on his profile and not one tweet has been sent, as the Vatican decides how to manage the Pope’s new online presence.
Despite the lack of activity, the account has still attracted 2500 followers: a sign that leaders of the Catholic Church still feel a “thirst” for real and open communication.
The Twiplomacy study found that the Vatican’s news.va portal enjoyed more success on Twitter: The portal also has accounts in six different languages, but the English account has 100.000 followers, while the Italian one has over 10 thousand.
Interactivity and communication with other users is still non existent though.
In terms of interactivity, there is more movement on the Pontifical Council for Social Communications’ account, @PCCS_VA, which is not mentioned in the study.
This account has 7 thousand followers and follows 155 users, including cardinals, religious orders and religious and non-religious information channels.
Interestingly, the most popular Vatican tweet ever, that is, the message that was re-tweeted the most often, is its first ever tweet.
The message appeared on 9 June 2011 on the @vatican_va_en account, announcing Pope Benedict XVI’s audience with Indian bishops.