Compared to past Popes, Pope Francis is a rockstar; he’s been in cheeky commercials, made headlines with statements of reform, dropped an album, and now, as if it wasn’t already written into the script, he’s become a viral sensation. And the Catholic Church couldn’t be happier.
It started with a picture of Pope Francis speaking into a microphone at a camp for displaced refugees in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. It straight up looks like he’s kicking a verse, so of course Twitter blew up, igniting the eponymous hashtag #PopeBars.
The picture of Francis circulating around Twitter includes written verses, all of which unfold to varying degrees of comedic success. A cute little joke that has gotten a stable of stars to react including artists Talib Kweli, Tommy Chong and Lin-Manuel Miranda (MacArthur “genius grant” winner). Here’s Miranda’s contribution:
This news comes at the heels of that aforementioned album that the Pope released just this past week entitled Wake Up!, which yes, is as terrible as it sounds.
What the Twitter-verse seems to forget is that this high profile Pope was put in place to curtail years of negative press; some of which include scandals of the most flagrant degree, ones that go back decades and spans across continents. Eyes are slowly opening and it has the Catholic Church reeling, so it did what most desperate institutions do, they went into damage control mode, wheeling out the friendliest face it could find and overdosing the general public with a campaign of likability.
It appears to be working (on at least some) because #PopeBars has sadly become an actual thing; this nonsense garnering more headlines than the 40,000 displaced refugees, which speaks to why the Pope and the Catholic Church are floundering in the first place. Maybe a more appropriate hashtag should be #PopesBehindBars.
