VATICAN CITY — Within roughly the time it takes to bake a frozen lasagna, online sellers had collectively produced more than 14,000 listings featuring the Church’s first American pontiff, including embroidery hoops reading ‘Daddy Leo,’ a tote bag that says ‘My Pope Is From Chicago,’ and one unauthorized Funko Pop already shipping out of a garage in Tempe.
The white smoke had barely cleared St. Peter’s Square before TikTok’s algorithm pivoted entirely off Met Gala recap content and onto slow-motion edits of the new Holy Father waving from the loggia, soundtracked to The Killers, Hozier, and, in one widely shared instance, Pitbull’s ‘Give Me Everything.’ Engagement metrics suggested the Vatican had, completely accidentally, gone viral the way a sourdough starter goes viral.
‘We are observing what trend forecasters call a full-stack canonization event,’ said Margot Phelan-Reilly, a digital culture analyst at the Pew Institute for Internet Behaviors. ‘He’s a meme, a thirst trap, a small-batch candle, and a SoFi spokesman, all before noon Eastern. By Tuesday he will be a Crumbl cookie. There is no stopping this. The pope is content now.’
By 4 p.m. local time, Sephora had reportedly fielded inquiries about whether the Vatican planned to license a ‘Conclave Glow’ highlighter palette. Stanley released a limited cassock-cream tumbler with no apparent permission. A Brooklyn matcha bar announced a ‘Holy See Latte’ with a cinnamon mitre on top, which sold out before anyone could ask what that meant theologically. Goldbelly began shipping a deep-dish pizza blessed in absentia, with a sticker that just said ‘PROBABLY FINE.’
The pope himself has not weighed in, though sources close to the conclave say he was briefly observed watching a TikTok of himself set to a sped-up Sufjan Stevens song and quietly mouthing the words ‘oh no.’
Vatican spokesman Cardinal Tomasso Veracruz issued a statement Friday morning asking the global online public to, quote, ‘maybe just sit with this for a minute before we decorate it,’ a request that was immediately memed, captioned, embroidered onto a sweatshirt, and sold for $68 by a woman in Asheville who lists her shop pronouns as ‘she/Holy.’
Etsy’s trust and safety team confirmed it was reviewing several listings, including a candle called ‘White Smoke (Smells Like a New Era and Old Money),’ a $44 prayer card depicting the Holy Father holding an Aperol spritz, and an entire subcategory of cross-stitch patterns reading ‘Pope Girl Summer.’ A spokesperson said the platform was ‘erring on the side of letting it ride.’
Reached for comment, a parishioner outside Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago said she was thrilled, proud, and had already preordered the bobblehead. Asked whether any of this was, perhaps, sacrilegious, she paused and said, ‘Honey, he’s ours now. We did this to Ditka. We will absolutely do it to a pope.’