Pope Francis is on Instagram as @franciscus. AP FILE PHOTO
Pope Francis has further strengthened his bid to reach out to younger audiences through Instagram.
The beloved pontiff, who joined the globally-renowned photo sharing website on Saturday, March 19, already has 1.6 million followers under the handle, @franciscus.
READ: Pope Francis joins Instagram as ‘Franciscus’
According to reports from TIME.com, the Pope even met Instagram CEO Kevin Strysom at the Vatican to discuss the power of images.
A photo posted by Kevin Systrom (@kevin) on Mar 19, 2016 at 4:33am PDT
The head of the Catholic Church has been dubbed by TIME magazine as ‘The Pope Millennials can love’ for his willingness to embrace technology during his papacy.
He earlier described social media platforms as a “gift for God”, while lauding its abilities to “form communities”.
The pope’s popularity among digital users is also evident through his Twitter page @pontifex, which has over 30 million followers in different languages.
His efforts to connect with global audiences has even been documented for the book, “The Tweetable Pope” by American author Michael J. O’Loughlin.
As of Tuesday morning, @franciscus posted a total of five photos and one video.
His first Instagram photo, which showed him kneeling and praying, already garnered 282,000 likes and counting.