Pope Francis, the world leader with the greatest success on Twitter

Barcelona (ACN).- Within a year, Pope Francis’ Twitter account, @Pontifex, has reached 12 million followers while his tweets are 4 times more re-tweeted than the ones of U.S. President Barack Obama. Indeed, each of Pope Francis’ messages generates an average of 6,637 re-tweets, while Obama’s messages are re-tweeted 2,309 times on average. Such data was unveiled on Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which is the main international event of cell phone related technologies. After analyzing the Pope’s impact on the digital environment, the study ‘The Internet loves Pope Francis’ concludes that Pope Francis is the world leader with the greatest influence in social networks, above the Dalai Lama or Cristina Kirchner.

“The Pope should serve everyone, especially the poorest, the weakest, the youngest”.  This tweet written on Pope Francis’ account on the 19^th of March 2013 led to a total of 30,608 re-tweets. According to the authors of the study, one of the reasons that have made the Pope’s tweets so popular is the high level of interaction aroused by his words: “The power of Pope Francis over the Internet and the fact that it has turned him into a unique phenomenon on the web is not due to the global magnitude of his presence but to the impact his words generate on the network” explained Jesús Colina, the Director of Aleteia.org which published the study.

Record number of searches and mentions on Google

In addition to reaching 12 million followers on Twitter within 13 months, Pope Francis joined the world leaders on Google, with record numbers of 1,737,300 searches and 49 million mentions registered between March and November 2013. The Pope was only surpassed by band One Direction and Singer Justin Bieber, “making him the third most popular figure on the Internet in 2013”.

Furthermore, the study stresses that half of the 38 million mentions achieved by Barack Obama on the internet come from the U.S. network, while in the case of the Pope, the Latin countries are predominant, but account for around 30% of the mentions only. According to the authors, this proves that “the messages of the Pope have no borders and include a global audience”.

Twitter accounts for 73% of the mentions of Pope Francis

In addition, the study indicates that the mentions generated by news portals and media account for 15% of the Pope’s presence on the internet only, while the rest is generated by comments on social networks, with 73% coming from Twitter alone.

Regarding the themes of the Pope’s tweets, the study also came to a surprising conclusion: two in ten, 21% are linked to political or economic issues, 17% to peace or war, 15 % to education, while 4% are strictly devoted to religious themes.

“The Church should take the path of new technologies without fear”

The Cardinal and Archbishop of Barcelona, ​​Lluís Martínez Sistach, attended the presentation of the study at the Mobile World Congress this Tuesday. He explained that “this report demonstrates, through the great following of Pope Francis, the network’s potential for social and ethical messages”, adding that “the Church should make the most of these new means of communications and take the path of new technologies without fear”.