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Wait for Vatican white smoke fires up social media
- On May 7, 2025, a group of senior Vatican church leaders will convene in Vatican City to choose the new pope following the passing of Pope Francis on April 21.
- This conclave, the first in 12 years, reflects rising public interest fueled by the Vatican's turn to digital communications and pop culture fascination.
- Clergymen like Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Luis Antonio Tagle actively use social media to share updates while respecting conclave secrecy, engaging millions online.
- Over 1.3 million tweets and 363 million TikTok views about the conclave illustrate intense global online engagement, with digital tools enabling broad religious insight.
- The conclave’s secrecy remains strict, with excommunication as penalty for leaks, while the event's outcome holds significant spiritual influence worldwide.
50 Articles
50 Articles
The media brouhaha and rumours have been important over the last two weeks around the Vatican. This has destabilized some voters and changes the approach that Catholics have of the papacy. ...
What do we actually see? In this section we look at striking images in contemporary culture, and what they have to say. This week: white smoke, black smoke at the conclave.
ABC FOX Montana
Wait for Vatican white smoke fires up social media
Hype has been building on social media around the Catholic Church's secretive, centuries-old tradition of conclaves to elect a new pope, animating users from the White House on down.
The palace near Piazza di Spagna has functioned as a spiritual and social embassy for the most conservative prelates.
Wait For Vatican White Smoke Fires Up Social Media
More than 1.3 million tweets have been published on X about the conclave, according to monitoring platform Visibrain, while TikTok videos on the topic have been viewed over 363 million times on the network with unparallelled reach among the young.
Coverage Details
Bias Distribution
- 44% of the sources lean Left
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