Pope Francis has gained more than three million followers on the photo-sharing app Instagram since his @franciscus account launched in March, Vatican Radio reported Monday.
A total of 143 items including photos and videos have been posted to the papal Instagram account which is published in English and subtitled in various other languages.
Francis joined the Instagram to mark the third anniversary of his inauguration as the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics in what is believed to be part of a Vatican social media strategy to engage with younger people around the world.
“Instagram will help recount the papacy through images, to enable all those who wish to accompany and know more about Pope Francis’s pontificate to encounter his gestures of tenderness and mercy,” the Vatican’s head of the secretariat for communications, Dario Vigano, said in March.
Francis is already a well-established social media user, tweeting regularly under the handle @Pontifex to over 27 million followers across accounts in nine languages.
