Tuesday evening, a plume of black smoke rose out of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican, signifying that the first round of balloting to elect a new pope had passed without any nominee receiving the necessary two-thirds majority.
Just as he finished a sermon on Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI symbolically released two doves into the air as a call for peace. But soon after the birds took flight, an aggressive seagull began dive bombing one of them. Uh oh. We're generally not superstitious, but we sure hope this isn't a sign of bad things to come.
The technologically-savvy Pope Benedict XVI has already encouraged priests to blog and helmed the launch of the Vatican’s YouTube channel and Pope2You mobile and Facebook apps. So it’s really no surprise that as part of his newly-launched news portal, the pontiff sent his first tweet recently — from the papal iPad.
You can follow the Vatican on Twitter at @news_va_en.