Did the Vatican just pick a fight with Justin Bieber? Um, yeah they did. But relax, it's just over social media stats. Because, you know, there aren't more important things to be concerned with.

Despite his status as the head of the often behind-the-times Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican sure are modern in the embrace of social media. The Pontiff joined Twitter only recently and has already started a social media "feud" with Bieber, who, btw, has millions more followers. But that doesn't impress the Catholics.

It wasn't a matter of The Biebs and the Pontiff exchanging barbs. Rather, the Vatican actually issued a statement about how Benny set a social media record for the most re-tweets by his new followers. So while The Biebs may have 15 times as many followers as the Pontiff with 31 million – give him time, his Holiness could catch up -- the Pope's followers tend to RT his tweets way more often, which is now considered a more important stat, since more people see (and share) what he's saying that way.

The Vatican stated that about 50 percent of the Pope's followers retweeted his first tweet, posted on Dec. 12, while only .07 percent of Beliebers/followers had retweeted his Sept. 26 about the death of Mrs. Bieber. That was one of the singer's most popular tweets of the year.

Wait, the Vatican took time away from critical religious issues to figure out RT stats? We're all for this often stodgy institution catching up with modernity, but really? To take aim at Justin Bieber and his domain of social media? That's some serious bidness right there. Especially since Beliebers will certainly do their part to desecrate the Pope's RT percentage and push their hero's stats to the top. Expect to see a spike in RTs of Bieber tweets.

Come on, JB can't be supplanted by the Pope of all people! At least he and Benedict have their Christianity in common.

The Pope gained 2.1 million followers in eight days, so he is multiplying at a rapid clip. He likely won't catch The Biebs anytime soon. However, there is another way he reigns supreme of Bieber in the Twitterverse: He tweets in English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Arabic. He will start tweeting in Latin and Chinese soon.

Take that, Biebs.

Watch the Justin Bieber 'As Long as You Love Me' Video

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