From catching a plushie to rocking a baseball cap: Pope Leo reaches out to Generation TikTok
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Pope Leo XIV was seen wearing a White Sox baseball team cap as he met newly-weds at the Vatican on June 11.
PHOTO: AFP
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From catching a plushie with just one hand to rocking a White Sox baseball cap, Pope Leo XIV is proving that the words “cool” and “conservative” can exist in the same sentence without clashing.
He is connecting with younger, TikTok-era non-believers whom the Catholic Church is reaching out to as it tries to gain a foothold in a world of virtual realities, artificial intelligence, online echo chambers and closed-off internet cocoons.
The 69-year-old Pope Leo was seen on June 11 trading his zucchetto for a ’47 branded Chicago White Sox baseball team cap as he met newly-weds at St Peter’s Square inside the Vatican.
The Pope – a Chicago native and the first American pontiff – is a fan of the White Sox. He was at Game 1 of the 2005 World Series, which broke the team’s 88-year drought when they won the title.
That photo of him with the baseball cap has already spread far and wide, cementing his reputation as “Da Pope” who, like everyone else, delights in some earthly pleasures and can preach from both on high and down low.
“He’s the ultimate influencer,” Mr Patrick Cassidy, vice-president of marketing at ’47, told The New York Times.
One non-fan commented on the White Sox’s Instagram page: “Pope Leo is making me a fan of you.”
Two weeks earlier, Pope Leo was seen catching a “Little Leo” plushie with his left hand as he stood on the open bed of the Popemobile that was being driven around the grounds of the Vatican.
A clip of that one-handed catch has been seen close to 200,000 times on The Straits Times’ Instagram page.
“The Pope is chill like that,” said one commenter on the site.
“Because most people are right-handed, it’s remarkable that he caught this with his left hand. He could be a lefty, but it’s doubtful. I’m so impressed with Pope Leo!! He’s amazing!!” said another.
Like Pope Francis
Effusive takes like these burnish Pope Leo’s image as someone young digital natives can relate to, even if his religious beliefs still skew towards conservative values.
The 1.4 billion-strong Catholic Church is trying to keep up with the times to stem an exodus of young churchgoers put off by its staid rituals and iron-clad dogmas.
While Catholicism in Asia and Africa is growing, church attendance in Europe is dropping and growth has been near-stagnant.
In a nod to the youth, the church will canonise in September
Acutis, who died in 2006 at age 15, is being held up as a role model for internet-savvy teens seeking to bring out their deeply spiritual side.
With his blazingly expanding digital footprint, Pope Leo is drawing comparisons with his more liberal predecessor, Pope Francis.
Pope Francis famously went viral with an image of him outfitted in a Balenciaga-coded white puffer jacket in 2023. But that photo was generated by artificial intelligence, and the Vatican was quick to distance him from it.
Pope Leo, on the other hand, is embracing the hype and, in doing so, is sparking a renewed interest in the Catholic faith among the youth.
Mr Gary Stefano, the groom who asked the Pope to wear the baseball cap for a photo with him and his new wife, told CNN that Pope Leo’s willingness to play along “showed the human side in the man”.
“He is the most humble man, down to earth and funny,” he said.
