Pope Francis instagram page 'likes'Brazilian model's raunchy picture, Vatican launches probe

Rome, Nov 21: In what comes as a recent turn of events, news of Pope Francis's official Instagram account liking a scantily-clad model's photo on the photo-video sharing platform, The Vatican said that it is investigating the matter.

According to reports, the Vatican is seeking 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.

Meanwhile, 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.

In a statement, 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.

"We can exclude that the 'like' came from the Holy See, and it has turned to Instagram for explanations," a report quoted a Vatican spokesperson as saying.

Earlier in the week, Garibotto's management company Coy co. shared a screenshot of the 'liked' photo of the model with the caption, claiming that they had "received the Pope's official blessing".

Garibotto shared the image of 'Franciscus', the Pope's official account, 'liking' her photo. The news instantly went viral with the internet flooding with memes and jokes at the cost of the pontiff.

It can be seen that Pope Francis is a hugely popular figure on social media with over 7.4 million followers on Instagram and over 18.8 million followers on Twitter. He was named the most popular world leader on social media in 2017.

According to reports, the Pope is not likely to be using his own phone to compose and share social media posts, though he was consulted and involved before each post. A "like", however, may just have slipped his purview.