Pope Francis now has over six million followers on Twitter. Luis
Badilla confirms this in an article published by Italian Catholic blog Il Sismografo:
“When the newly elected Pontiff, Pope Francis, was chosen in the
Conclave last 13 March, he “inherited” just over 3,300,000 followers
from Benedict XVI (this includes followers added during the sede vacante
period).This number was reached gradually since the activation of the papal account on 12 December 2012, first available in 8 languages and then in 9, when Latin was added.
Within the space of 48 days – that is between Pope Francis’ election on 13 March and 29 April – the @Pontifex account “has gained over 2,700,000 followers, an average of 60 thousand a day.”
Il Sismografo highlights three interesting aspects of this growth: “the first is that Spanish speaking followers are rapidly gaining ground against their English speaking counterparts in terms of numbers (so it is possible that the former could overtake the latter).”
The second is to do with the significant increase in the number of Portuguese followers, which has risen even further in these past few days, ahead of Pope Francis’ trip to Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) to preside over the 28th World Youth Day.”
Finally, it is worth highlighting the considerable number of followers the Latin version of the papal account has attracted.
From the day it was activated (20 January 2013) to today, “the account has accumulated 87,000 followers. This was untinkable until recently.”
It also shows how the language of Cicero, which was once the language of the Catholic Church, is far from dead. All the different language versions of the @Pontifex account put together had accumulated over five million followers last 4 April.