Here’s the Pope visit emoji... as promised by the Mail last week
WE’VE come a long way since the last Papal visit... technology has even been blessed – or cursed, depending on your outlook – with the emoji.
And as revealed by the Irish Daily Mail last week, there is a smiley Pope for Twitter users to add to their online conversations about his visit to Ireland.
Unveiled yesterday, the emoji features an image of a beaming Pope Francis with a background featuring the Tricolour.
Twitter created the online animation to mark the historic visit of the Pontiff here in less than two weeks’ time.
It was developed in conjunction with the World Meeting of Families, which is overseeing the visit. The emoji will officially be launched today and can be triggered by using the hashtags #PopeInIreland, #PápaInÉirinn, #WMOF2018 or #FestivalOfFamilies.
Twitter said in a statement the emoji was created to acknowledge that the Pope’s visit as part of the WMOF ‘is being closely watched by people all over the world’.
The social media site had previously launched similar emojis to celebrate Papal visits to the United States and Latin America.
Twitters’ director of public policy for Europe, Karen White said: ‘The visit of Pope Francis is one of the biggest events happening in Ireland this year and naturally many people will be using Twitter to discuss his time here.
‘We want to encourage everyone across the world to join the conversation on Twitter about his visit to Ireland so we’ve created this special emoji for people to use.’
Pope Francis will arrive in Ireland on August 25 for his two-day visit.
The WMOF organisation told the Mail last week it was very happy to see the introduction of the emoji.
‘It’s exciting to see the 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.’