Pope Francis’ Like On Natalia Garibotto's Steamy Instagram Photo Got Her 600K New Followers

Pope Francis liked one of Natalia Garibotto's steamy photos on Instagram and it boosted her brand on the social media platform.

Garibotto was shocked when she saw that Pope Francis' "liked" one of her sexy pictures. The Instagram model, who admitted to being religious and attends church often, did not expect it. However, she was grateful for the papal publicity because it was beneficial to her. It made her gain 600,000 followers, enabling her to make more money on the platform.

Garibotto found the pope's like a "big deal" and considered it an entrepreneurial and divine incident, but many found it to be a sinful scandal for the pope's part.

"I make money off Instagram," she told Page Six before adding that the unexpected attention helped her to have "more leverage" on brands. She lives in Miami and poses mostly in bikinis. For her, the pope's like "gave me a confidence to post more in clothes and make deals in fashion."

The pope's like has since been deleted and numerous reports pointed out that his social media accounts are run by a team. Thus, the like could be from someone running the account and not really from Pope Francis.

"We can exclude that the ‘like’ came from the Holy See, and it has turned to Instagram for explanations," a Vatican spokesperson told The Guardian.

Pope Francis has a huge social media following. He has 7.6 million followers on Instagram and 18.8 million on Twitter. In 2017, he was the most popular world leader on the social media platform, but he rarely posts personal content, according to The Guardian.

"The pope is not like Donald Trump, he’s not sitting around using his phone or computer to tweet all day long," said Robert Mickens, the Rome-based editor of the English-language edition of the Catholic daily newspaper La Croix.

"He does, for example, approve the tweets – but not the likes – and on very rare occasions he has said he would like to tweet something because of a developing situation or emergency. So he would have nothing to do with this – it’s the communications department, and how this happens … who knows."