Frustrated Facebook users were met with error messages early Thursday afternoon when the world’s largest social media site briefly crashed. Though service was quickly restored, many took to Twitter to theorize about the cause of the outage. The consensus? Pope Francis was at fault.
The Pope was in Washington, DC this week as part of a historic six-day trip to the U.S. His highly anticipated visit has been actively discussed on social media, where users have debated his positions on climate change and economic inequality. The Pope held a closed-door meeting with President Obama on Wednesday, and addressed a joint session of Congress on Thursday morning.
Facebook went down at about 12:30 p.m. ET, two hours after the Pope spoke at the Capitol. Service was restored as of about 12:45 p.m. ET.
Here are some of the best tweets about the Pope breaking the Internet.
Pope Francis broke the Internet. #Facebookdown #PopeinUS
— Archdiocese of NY (@NY_Arch) September 24, 2015
Pope says, “We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology.” Mark Zuckerberg, convicted by the speech, shuts down Facebook.
— Joe Carter (@joecarter) September 24, 2015
“Pizza Rat/Grumpy Cat/Facebook down/The Pope’s in town!” -New lyrics to We Didn’t Start the Fire
— Ian Phillips (@IanReelDeal) September 24, 2015
Just heard on the Metro by a woman who came to DC to see the Pope “he gave Congress the what for” #facebookdown
— Misplaced Hashtags (@misplacedtags) September 24, 2015
