About

Pope Francis vs. High Sparrow is an exploitable image macro template that uses a picture of the current Pope, Francis, and an image of the character High Sparrow from the HBO show Game of Thrones. The meme format is typically used as a two-panel comparison meme with the image of the Pope on the left representing a normal state and the image of the High Sparrow on the right representing a more unhinged or disheveled look based on the individual captions above each photo.

Origin

On June 13th, 2016, the Tumblr account [[+MEME+REPLY]] uploaded an image to Tumblr^[1] that has Pope Francis contrasted with the High Sparrow from Game of Thrones, acting not as a meme but more of a comparison piece due to the similarities of the two people (shown below).

On June 15th, 2016, the image spread and become a meme format posted to Twitter by the user @ResiVil,^[2] in which the Spanish caption is about what it's like to live with your parents contrasted against what it's like to live by yourself (shown below).

Spread

The meme received a quick spike in usage later that year in 2016 when it came to New Year's celebrations, with it being used again as people compared what it's like drinking on New Year's Eve compared to waking up hungover the next morning, which was uploaded to a meme roundup on the official Peru.com^[3] website (shown below).

On May 19th, 2017, a version of the meme was posted to Reddit by Redditor^[4] GlimmeringTesticles in which the contrast and punchline have to do with how the person looks at Mass versus them at home, being the first meme to take advantage of the first image being of the Pope, the highest human authority in Catholicism (shown below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References