Pope Francis has been on Twitter since 2013, and with just 751 Tweets he’s amassed an incredible 8.9 million Followers. That is very impressive… But just this week, he made his debut on Instagram, and his account has grown extraordinarily in just a few days.
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This weekend, Pope Francis announced on Twitter that he would be launching his own Instagram account.
I am beginning a new journey, on Instagram, to walk with you along the path of mercy and the tenderness of God.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) March 19, 2016
The @francisus account set a new record for Instagram in half the time that it took David Beckham to do the same. Within a mere 12 hours, the account was followed by over a million people, as opposed to David Beckham’s within 24 hours. You might think that David Beckham set up his account years ago, and that there were fewer people on the platform back then. But you would be wrong, because that happened in May of 2015.
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At the time of writing, the Pope’s the first image on Instagram has already over 270k likes and over 32k comments – quite fittingly, it’s an image of the Pope praying. Five more posts later (there are only 6 posts at the moment), and the account has over 1.6 million Followers!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BDIgGXqAQsq
Only a few weeks ago, Pope Francis had met with Instagram’s CEO Kevin Systrom, talking about “the power of images to unite people across different cultures and languages,”. It’s not a surprise therefore that Instagram‘s top man was actually at the Vatican, the very day the first post went live. He even posted his own image marking the occasion.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BDIhEh9gBIb