A week after Pope Francis was caught ‘liking’ a sexually titillating picture of a bikini model named Natalia Garibotto, the Vatican has informed that a probe into the matter has been initiated. The official Instagram account of Pope Francis made the headlines on November 13 after eagle-eyed social media users pointed out that he had ‘liked’ a racy picture of Natalia.
As per reports, the image was eventually ‘unliked’ by the account of Pope Francis. The faux pas, which has led to international embarrassment for the Head of the Catholic Church, has now prompted an internal investigation. As per a report in The Guardian, a Vatican spokesperson informed, “We can exclude that the ‘like’ came from the Holy See, and it has turned to Instagram for explanations.” Sources have said that the account of Pope Francis is managed by a team of employees and not the Pope himself.
Catholic daily La Croix’s english Editor (Rome), Rober Mikens said that Pope Francis approves the tweets and media content, posted on his behalf, but not the likes. “The pope is not like Donald Trump, he’s not sitting around using his phone or computer to tweet all day long…He does, for example, approve the tweets – but not the likes – and on very rare occasions he has said he would like to tweet something because of a developing situation or emergency. So he would have nothing to do with this – it’s the communications department, and how this happens … who knows,” he claimed.
The Controversy over Instagram ‘like’ by Pope Francis
Earlier, one of the social media users, Barstool Sports, had spotted Pope Francis’ online indulgences and shared a screen recording showing the pope’s Instagram name in the likes section of Natalia’s photo. The account shared the screen recording with caption “Pope Francis is horny as hell”. “Franciscus”, the official Instagram handle of Pope Francis was seen in the list of accounts who had liked the picture.
In the picture, Natalia was seen wearing suspenders and an outfit resembling a Catholic school girl. When Natalia Garibotto was informed about the ‘like’ on her picture by Pope Francis, she found the situation amusing. She jocularly noted, “At least I’m going to heaven”, after Barstool Sports’ tweet showing Pope Francis among thousands of those who had liked her picture on Instagram.
