The Pope Broke A New Record For Having The Fastest Growing Instagram Account

We’re living in interesting times where cultural establishments like the papacy are opening social media accounts to keep in touch with their following. In Pope Francis’s papacy, we have seen that he is a social media savvy Pope like for example, he has a Twitter account that is available in several languages with over 25 million followers in between them.

Well, according to CNN Money, the Pope has broken a record where his account has broken the record for gaining a million Instagram followers in the shortest time so far (12 hours) which was apparently held by David Beckham.

His first post garnered over 270,000 likes and over 30,000 comments where people from around the world welcomed the Pope to Instagram. As of now, the account has over 1.5 million followers with only 5 posts being shared.

The Vatican had issued a press release on Friday indicating that the Pope will open an Instagram account on Saturday, which interesting enough is just before the Palm Sunday celebrations. The account name @Franciscus was chosen, which is Latin for Francis. They also detailed what the Instagram account will be used for by the Pope:

“Instagram will help recount the Papacy through images, to enable all those who wish to accompany and know more about Pope Francis’ pontificate to encounter his gestures of tenderness and mercy.”

As of now, the Pope has not used fancy filters that are available on Instagram or their native apps like Boomerang and Layout but you never know what he’ll post next.