Pope Francis’s Irish visit will be emojional

Twitter marks event with special icon

AS Ireland prepares for Pope Francis’s historic visit to Ireland, Twitter is set to roll out its own welcome for the Pontiff.

The Irish Daily Mail can reveal the social media giant, in conjunction with the World Meeting of Families, will introduce a special emoji for the visit later this month.

The emoji is understood to include an image of Pope Francis in front of the Irish flag, and one featuring Knock Shrine.

The hashtags will include: #popeinireland; pápainÉirinn; and #festivaloffamilies.

The move is similar to the creation of special emojis for other major events like the World Cup.

Twitter will also introduce a recommended list of accounts to follow during the visit.

The World Meeting of Families organisation told the Irish Daily Mail it was very happy to see the introduction of the emoji. It’s exciting to see the #Peace: The emoji used for the Pope’s US visit in 2015 Irish version of a Pope Emoji being launched,’ a spokeswoman said. ‘The Pope is very active on social media so this is something we are looking forward to seeing.

‘Social media didn’t exist when Pope John Paul visited, so this is a new era in technology for such trips.’

A Popemoji app was released for Francis’ visit to the US in 2015.

It featured a set of 52 Pope-themed stickers and 14 animated clips of Francis.

The stickers and clips were heavily inspired by the Pope’s personality, like his love of soccer and affinity for selfies.

Meanwhile, traffic management remains a major issue for gardaí working on the transport plan for Dublin and Knock during the Pope’s visit on August 25 and 26 during the World Meeting of Families.

Meetings are being held by Garda management to see how they can best deal with the 500,000 visitors expected to descend on Dublin for the

Renting fields to us as car parks

36-hour visit.

Senior security sources previously revealed to the Mail that the M50 motorway could become a ‘car park’ if proper ‘strategic’ traffic-flow systems are not put in place.

It’s understood that Garda management and the World Meeting of Families are looking to rent fields from farmers north and south of the city for use as car parks.