In a strange social media move, the Vatican has deleted all of the tweets sent from Pope Benedict XVI’s @Pontifex account to make way for a new pope.

Benedict XVI was the first pope to use Twitter to communicate with his flock (though, of course, he’s the only one to hold the pontiff position since Twitter’s founding), and he urged Catholics to use Twitter to spread the “Good News.” The account has more than 1.6 million followers. Benedict XVI stepped down today as pope, and his resignation will become official at 5 p.m. Pacific. His new title will be “pope emeritus,” which was created just for him.

He sent out one final tweet today reading:

“Thank you for your love and support. May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives.”

The Twitter account’s name now is titled “Sede Vacante,” which is the name of the period when the papacy is vacant.

Those who want to read through an archive of Benedict XVI’s tweets can still do so at the Vatican’s website.

While it makes some sense to have the Twitter account reserved for just the thoughts of the current Pope, it does remove a lot of history from the account. All of Benedict XVI’s tweets that had been re-tweeted by followers now will not show on their timelines as well.

It’s almost as if Benedict XVI’s messages had never been spread in the first place.

Photo via Pontifex/Twitter

Struggling social-game giant Zynga has more than 42.4 million monthly active players for FarmVille 2, and that means it can dig out all sorts of interesting details about those people playing the online social game on Facebook and Zynga.com.

The surprising facts from Zynga’s findings include: 17 players are in the Vatican City. Maybe the Pope is playing? FarmVille 2 launched in September. While it isn’t as popular at this point in its life cycle as the original FarmVille was at its peak (around 83 million monthly active users), the numbers of people playing it is still impressive.

Zynga also says it has nine players in Tuvalu, a remote island nation with a population of 10,544. About players harvest 350 million crops every day and plant more than 8,000 every second. Enough virtual fertilizer has been produced to cover 24 million acres of farmland. Zynga says its Water.org charitable campaign in FarmVille 2 set a record for player donations from any Zynga game in 2012. My favorite stat: 17,876 people received a lifetime supply of clean water in real life, thanks to the donations.

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