Pope Francis' Instagram account broke David Beckham's Instagram record. Football star David Beckham reached 1 million followers on Instagram in 24 hours, but Pope Francis got his first million in just 12 hours.
CNN reports that Pope Francis' Instagram account is his own. This means that the official Vatican Instagram account will remain separate from that of Pope Francis. The first photo that was posted on Pope Francis' Instagram shows the papal head in prayer. The Instagram photo was captioned in nine different languages through which Pope Francis asked for prayers.
Pope Francis can be found under the Instagram handle "Franciscus." Members of the Vatican will help Pope Francis maintain this Instagram account.
This social media outing is the result of a meeting between Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom with Pope Francis. In their meeting, Pope Francis and Kevin Systrom agreed on the unique ability of images to serve as a uniting factor for people across the globe.
Kevin Systrom, for his part, posted his photo with Pope Francis with a caption of welcome as well as of hope for what the papal Instagram account will be able to accomplish.
"Watching Pope Francis post his first photo to Instagram today was an incredible moment," Kevin Systrom posted. "@franciscus, welcome to the Instagram community! Your messages of humility, compassion and mercy will leave a lasting mark."
Perez Hilton points out that the Instagram debut is the second foray by Pope Francis to reach people globally through social media. Pope Francis has a Twitter account, which was debuted in February 2012. To date, Pope Francis as close to 9 million followers on Twitter.
A photo posted by Pope Francis (@franciscus) on Mar 19, 2016 at 4:24am PDT
Posts on Pope Francis' Twitter account is as impressively more regular than one might expect for someone of such global importance and stature. Followers are excited to see more nuggets of wisdom and reminders on Twitter and on Instagram from Pope Francis.
