On December 23, an adult model who goes by the name 'Margot' shared a screenshot on Twitter which showed Pope Francis's official Instagram account 'liking' a rather racy photo of the model on Instagram.
The incident occurred over a month after the Pope's Instagram account was first "caught" liking images of bikini-clad models on the photo-sharing platform Instagram.
Sharing the screenshot, Margot wrote, "uhhh the pope liked my picture?" She also tweeted the set of images with the caption, "hey that's me" in another tweet.
uhhh the pope liked my picture? pic.twitter.com/b4hOj2vYHO
— Margot 🦊 (@margot_foxx) November 19, 2020
In a second tweet, she cheekily wrote, "the pope liked my picture that means i'm going to heaven."
the pope liked my picture that means i’m going to heaven 😌
— Margot 🦊 (@margot_foxx) December 22, 2020
The images are going viral and are sure to leave the papacy red-faced, yet again.
As per reports in the Catholic News Agency earlier in November, the Vatican had sought an explanation from Facebook-owned Instagram after the Pope's official account was found to have "liked" a racy image of Brazilian model Natalia Garibotto.
The Catholic Church has also started an internal investigation into the matter to find out who could have possibly made the error at the pontiff's end, if so.
Garibotto had made most of the news at the time, and went as far as to tell a media portal, "My mum may hate my ass pics but the Pope be double-tapping."
In a statement to The Guardian, however, the Vatican said that there was no question of the Pope having liked the photo and has thus sought an explanation from Instagram about how it happened.
And yet, here it is again. Another 'liked' photo of a model on social media. Pope Francis is a hugely popular figure on social media with over 7.4 million followers on Instagram where he is called "Franciscus" and over 18.8 million followers on Twitter. He was named the most popular world leader on social media in 2017.
Last month, the Vatican had sought an explanation from Instagram after the Pope's official account was found to have 'liked' a racy image of Brazilian model Natalia Garibotto. The photo showed Garibotto wearing a racy outfit that resembles a school uniform. The bikini model claims that the pontiff's verified Instagram account 'Franciscus' was among the 133,000 that 'liked' her photo.
Joking about it on Twitter, she had also said: "At least I'm going to heaven."
According to the Catholic News Agency, the Pope's social media channels are controlled by a team of employees and an internal investigation has been launched into the matter.
After the 'like' had come to light in November, The Guardian quoted the editor of Catholic daily newspaper La Croix as saying, "The pope is not like Donald Trump, he's not sitting around using his phone or computer to tweet all day long," and added that while the pope approves the tweets, he does not usually approve the likes.
