Pope Francis Emojis Launched Ahead Of U.S. September Visit

Holy smoke! Pope Francis is now in a set of emojis!

Keyboard app Swyft has released a new set dedicated to him, in order to honour his September 22 visit to the United States. These emojis can be applied for Android as well as iOS devices, including 52 Pope stickers and 14 animated GIFs.

Users downloading the emoji pack can isolate some fun images of the Pope with landmarks in U.S. cities, such as a sticker showing him in front of the Washington Monument or the Statue of Liberty. He was shown "eating a taco, going to a concert, spinning a basketball, taking a selfie and waving from the iconic Popemobile," along with many others.

All these emojis have been commissioned by a Catholic group in order to honour the visit by the Pope to the U.S. on September 22.

"We look at the whole initiative of connecting the church better with young people and young people with the church as fandom," Kathleen Hessert, Swyft's creator, said in a Mashable report. "If he was a very stoic kind of pope like we've seen so many times in the past, it probably wouldn't work. Pope Francis is a down-to-earth guy."

While some are concerned that the emojis could offend some conservative Catholics, creators feel that the Pope will give his approval, which would be "legitimate", even as the Pope seems more aware of technology and knowledge banks than his predecessors.

Hence, he has nine official Twitter accounts with more than 20 million followers, noted BBC News.

The global Catholic network Aleteia.org has commissioned the emoji sets for the #GoodIsWinning campaign.

The group hopes to honour him and also rope in more people, even as mobile devices and emojis are a couple of communication forms today, according to hngn.