ROME – By any measure one chooses to employ, the papacy is among the most visible offices on the face of the planet.
On the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, for instance, Pope Francis’s combined following of 53 million, spread over his nine different language accounts, currently puts him in third place among current world leaders, behind only Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and President Joe Biden of the United States.
Given the spotlight perennially trained on a pope, you might think there would never be any doubt as to whether he actually said something, since someone is always listening … and anyway, if a line is erroneously attributed to a pope, the Vatican has more communications channels than you can shake a stick at to set the record straight.
