About

Pope Francis Slap refers to a viral video of Pope Francis slapping the hand of a pilgrim in St. Peter's square in December 2019. The slapped woman in the video grabbed the Pope's hand and yanked him towards her which angered him leading him to slap her hand repeatedly. Pope Francis apologized the next day for loosing his patience.

Origin

On December 31st, 2019, Pope Francis greeted pilgrims at St. Peter's square.^[1] Reuters posted a video of an altercation between the pope and a pilgrim to Twitter with the caption, "A woman grabbed Pope Francis towards her when he was greeting pilgrims at St. Peter's Square. The abrupt gesture appeared to cause him pain and the visibly disgruntled pope swiftly wrenched his hand free" (shown below). The video gained over 970 likes and 400 retweets in two days.

Spread

On December 31st, 2019, Many Twitter users took sides after seeing the video. They either thought the pope's actions were inappropriate or that they were justified. Twitter user @Mamadoxie^[2] tweeted, "Just a little while ago I saw a clip of him kissing the feet of some Musl*m dignitaries. It was embarrassing. Then he swats one of his own flock? #NotMyPope (I’m not Catholic, but still..)" (shown below, left). The tweet garnered over 250 likes and 40 retweets in two days. The next day, Twitter user @TheDweck tweeted, "What’s the point of being pope if you can’t slap anyone you want" which received over 3,700 likes and 300 retweets in a day.

On January 1st, 2020, Pope Francis gave a speech apologizing for his actions. Twitter user @Cindy_Wooden posted a video of the apology with the caption, "#PopeFrancis acknowledges that we all lose our patience sometimes. 'Me, too. And I apologize for the bad example I gave yesterday' when he slapped the hand of a woman who grabbed him." (shown below). The video accumulated over 3,200 likes in a day.

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