Pope Francis is the most influential world leader on Twitter, according to an annual global study of world leaders on the social network.
His messages on the social network are the most widely circulated, with each 140-character tweet re-tweeted an average of 9,929 times, according to an annual analysis of Twitter traffic published this week by the US-based PR company Burson-Marsteller.
Christ is risen! Christ is alive and journeys with us!
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) April 5, 2015
By contrast, US President Obama’s tweets are re-tweeted an average of 1,210 times each, making him the fourth most influential behind King Salman of Saudi Arabia and the President of Venezuala, Nicolas Maduro.
This is the third year in a row that Pope Francis has emerged as most influential leader on the social networking site.
In terms of followers, the Pope, who has 19.5 million across his nine different language accounts, is the second most-followed world leader in 2015, behind President Obama, with 57 million followers, but ahead of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Pope Francis’ number of followers is up 5.5 million this year.
Today is my anniversary of ordination to the priesthood. Please pray for me and all priests.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) December 13, 2014
The company also rated him the “most noteworthy” tweeter among world leaders.