Pope Francis, the 266th pontiff, died on Monday 21 April at age 88. Tributes from around the world have poured in for the man dubbed “the people’s pope”. Pope Francis’s social media presence made him beloved among younger people, as his relatability and humility shone through the screen.
We look back at some of his biggest media moments that saw him spread messages of hope to people across the globe.
“At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and his church,” Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the Vatican camerlengo, said on Monday.
Argentinian-born Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the pope in 2013, the first ever from Latin America.
Both Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese have paused their campaigning efforts for the day, out of respect for Pope Francis’s passing.
While ‘influencer’ might not fit the Pope just right, he certainly embraced social media to spread messages aligned with the Catholic Church’s mission. While Pope Francis has given sermons condemning the ills of social media, he has also long recognised the role social media platforms play in engaging people and spreading messages of hope.
The Vatican has embraced a strategy of meeting people where they’re at, fuelling their cultural relevance all the more. Francis and his team have tapped X, Instagram and YouTube to reach people.
Pope Francis’s first Instagram post, in 2016, featured a photo of him kneeling with his head bowed in prayer, with the caption “Pray for me” repeated in eight languages.
“I am beginning a new journey, on Instagram, to walk with you along the path of mercy and the tenderness of God,” Francis posted on Twitter the same day.
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During a 2015 tour of the US, the Vatican enlisted social media agencies and software providers to engage its audiences. That included the Sports Media Challenge, the digital agency known for encouraging Shaq to join X; Swyft Media, a branded emoji company that was sold to Monotype Imaging Holdings; and Tracx, a social media data company.
Francis and his team tapped these agencies to generate insights on what matters most to young social users, as well as potential strategies for how best to engage them on issues like immigration, climate change and poverty.
The campaign enlisted a “digital street team” of 60 digital strategists, content creators and “real time community managers,” 35 of whom published content on the ground at the Pope’s appearances.
The Vatican approved the launch of campaign-specific hashtags such as #PopeIsHope, as well as a Popemoji keyboard that earned 30,000 downloads in the four days following its release.
The launch began in Times Square, college campuses and Catholic youth groups 10 days in advance, with thousands of “Pope-on-a-stick”, Popemoji t-shirts and stickers distributed.
In 2015, Pope Francis released a pop-rock (pope-rock?) album titled ‘Wake up!’, reaching Number 4 in the US World Albums charts.
The album was produced by Don Giulio Neroni and featured 11 tracks of Pope Francis’ spoken-word messages in Italian, English, Spanish and Portuguese.
In 2013, Pope Francis graced the cover of Time magazine as its Person of the Year.
Just a year later, Pope Francis became the first pontiff to grace the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. The cover features a picture of the pope, smiling and waving, above the cover line, “The times they are a-changin”.
It featured a profile by contributing editor Mark Binelli, who wrote, “In less than a year since his papacy began, Pope Francis has done much to separate himself from past popes and establish himself as a people’s pope”.
On Monday, Time magazine placed a photo of Pope Francis on the cover of its latest issue to commemorate his passing.
The cover features a black-and-white image of the pontiff. In an obituary, the magazine described him as a “reform-minded Roman Catholic leader who guided the church through an era of crisis”.
Pope Francis and his team launched Vatican News in 2015, a digital platform dedicated to sharing news from the Vatican and staying in touch with followers with a presence across X, Instagram and YouTube.
Management consultancy Accenture Interactive was appointed to create a brand and digital strategy for the communications system.
The media site was part of a series of reforms initiated by Pope Francis in 2015, when he announced the creation of a new Secretariat for Communication.
The site aims to improve the “consistency” and “clarity” of the Vatican’s communications to become a “more accessible Church”, Accenture Interactive said.
The site unified all the Vatican’s existing communication channels under a single brand, including Vatican Media and Radio Vaticana Italiana. It reports on the activities of the Pope, the Vatican, local churches, and world news, and features a multilingual editorial team.
“Surpassing the concept of being a simple digital platform, Vatican News seeks to respond and, in a certain sense, to anticipate the continual changes taking place in communication, with the objective of “communicating the Gospel of mercy to all people” in various cultures. It communicates and interacts through audio, video, text and images on a multi-lingual, multi-culture, multi-channel, multi-media and multi-device plain,” Vatican News’s website said.
In all his unusual technological endeavours, Francis warned against heavy consumption of digital media as “mental pollution” and that it “can stop people from learning how to live wisely, to think deeply and to love generously”.
Among the many teachings he left us with, we would all do good to heed this advice and consume intentionally, never forgetting, as he never did (still holding meetings up until his final day), that connection is found in face-to-face encounters.
