A model whose risqué photo was “liked” by the official Pope Francis Instagram account has paid tribute to the 88-year-old following his death. Five years ago, Natalia Garibotto, 32, had one of her photos liked by the pontiff’s Instagram account, which she captioned: “I can teach you a thing or two.”
The photo was posted in October 2020, although it’s unclear when it received the papal approval, it was finally rescinded on 14 November. An investigation followed and the Catholic Church turned to Instagram for answers. At the time, Pope Francis’ account had over 7.4million followers and did not follow anybody on the social media site.
After her picture was liked, Natalia, who had more than 2.4million followers, joked: “At least I’m going to heaven. My mum may hate my a*s pics, but the Pope be double-tapping.” A Vatican spokesperson said at the time: “We can exclude that the ‘like’ came from the Holy See, and it has turned to Instagram for explanations.”
It was later concluded that an employee possibly ‘liked’ the photo while thinking they were using their personal account, or that the Pope’s account was hacked.
Following Pope Francis’s death on Easter Monday, Natalia paid tribute to the figure who helped her “grow all over the world”. Natalia said: “Pope Francis, you are a legendary Pope. May you rest in peace.” She added: “Rest in Paradise, my friend.”
She said he “showed the world a different side, that he was also human”. Natalia, the daughter of a Brazilian mother and an Argentine father, based in Miami, US, added: “He helped me grow all over the world.”
The Pope, who also had X, has 18million followers on the social network site and was the most popular world leader on the social media platform back in 2017.
However, he would rarely post his own messages, according to Robert Mickens, the Rome-based editor of the English-language edition of the Catholic daily newspaper La Croix.
Instead, he would give the approval of the tweets which would be posted from his account. “The pope is not like Donald Trump, he’s not sitting around using his phone or computer to tweet all day long,” said Mr Mickens.
“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.”
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