Pope Francis Named as 'Most Influential' User on Twitter

Pope Francis at Varginha, Brazil in 2013

A recent study on the Twitter accounts of famous world leaders has found out that Pope Francis has become the most influential user on the social networking site as based on his number of tweets and favorites, which was found to be eight times higher than that of U.S. President Barack Obama.

"Pope Francis @Pontifex is by far the most influential tweep with 9,929 retweets for every tweet he sends on his Spanish account and 7,527 retweets on average on his English account," the Twiplomacy study stated.

For Obama, he had the highest number of followers on Twitter with as many as 57 million individuals following his account. Meanwhile, the Pope's combined Twitter accounts in different languages raked in a little over 19.5 million all in all.

With regards to the number of users who have retweeted and favorited the posts of the world leaders, Obama's posts have been retweeted on an average of 1,210 times, which is noticeably fewer than those of Pope Francis, whose posts have been retweeted on an average of 9,929 times.

In addition, the Vatican leader gained the title of "most influential' by the Twiplomacy study in the past two consecutive years.

The Pope often posts a message at least once every few days, most often reaching out towards Christians for prayers, showing support for victims of worldly crisis and disasters, as well as expressing sentiments on current issues. such as climate change.

"Every Christian community must be a welcoming home for those searching for God, for those searching for a brother or sister to listen to them," Francis' wrote in his tweet last Tuesday.

He also took part in Earth Day as he posted the following message on caring for the Earth as a means of preserving God's blessings.

"We need to care for the Earth so that it may continue, as God willed, to be a source of life for the entire human family", the Pope wrote in his post that has been favorited by over 13,400 users so far.

His @Pontifex account has been registered in several different languages, such as English, Arabic, Latin, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Polish and Portugese.

Aside from Pope Francis and President Obama, the Twiplomacy study also identified the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an and the White House account as other Twitter users who have the largest Twitter follower bases.

King Salman of Saudi Arabia and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro also made up the most influential list, next to the Vatican leader.