Pope Francis News 2013: Holy Father Increases His Popularity In Social Media; Becomes Twitter's Maximum Leader

"Dear friends, from the bottom of my heart I thank you and ask you keep praying for me. Pope Francis"

This was the message with which His Holiness Pope Francis reached 98,100 retweets and 55,200 marks as "favorite" in social media, the same day of the announcement of his election, March 13, 2013.

From that moment, the Argentinian Pope has reached a huge popularity in virtual networks. In fact, a Reputation Metrics project research, by Media, Reputation and Intangibles Center (MRI) from Navarra University, says the maximum prelate is, absolutly, the "world leader with the most influence in Twitter".

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Just a few days after taking the ownership of the Holy See, the Twitter account of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, @Pontifex, added 3 million followers, and by march 17, just four days after his appointment, another 800 thousand users followed him. In late June, Pope Francis had doubled the initial figure, reaching 8 million followers.

Based on this research, every post written by Pope Francis is retweeted over 22 thousand times even when he's not the user with more followers compared to other public persons and having in mind he has tweeted just 100 messages.

The same research also reports the Latin American Pope Twitter account has grown by 161 percent in terms of followers from various countries, primarily Spanish speaking. While national English speaking followers have grown by up to 71 percent, according to Aciprensa.

In addition to this, the research also details that Pope Francis' account in portuguese language was the one who registered an increase up to 500 percent. This is probably due to the recent visit of the Holy Father to Brazil to lead another edition of World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, this past July.

The Navarra university study shows that President Barack Obama, fell to fourth position after leading the popularity list in the same ranking, while the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro now stands at the second position.

If you want to consult the full results of the Spaniard University reasearch, click here.