The Kerala unit of the Indian National Congress was caught in a bind after a sarcastic social media post on Prime Minister Narendra Modi meeting Pope Francis drew flak and had to be deleted. Congress, in a social media post on Sunday, June 16, had said, “Finally, the Pope got a chance to meet God [referring to PM Modi’].” It garnered around 1.1 million views and over 25K likes. The now-deleted post was an apparent dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that he was “convinced” that he was “sent by god”. 

Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Kerala President K Surendran claimed that the post was intended to mock the Pope and the Christian community. He said, “The @INCIndia Kerala "X" handle, seemingly run by radical Islamists or Urban Naxals, continues to post derogatory and humiliating content against nationalistic leaders. Now, it has even stooped to mocking the respected Pope and the Christian community. It's certain that the AICC General Secretary from Kerala, @kcvenugopalmp, is aware of this. The question is, what are @RahulGandhi and @kharge's interests in supporting this? (sic).”

Posting a clarification, Congress said none of their workers would entertain insulting the Pope, whom Christians around the world see as God-like. “However, the Congress has no qualms about mocking Narendra Modi, who insults the believers of this country by calling himself God. People will understand the communal mind of Surendran and Modi's entourage to portray the mocking of Narendra Modi's shameless political games as an insult to the Pope. Surendran and his colleagues are trying to downgrade Christians as a group of people who have no self-respect and spread communal poison as soon as they inject it,” they added. 

Congress further asked PM Modi and the BJP to tender an unconditional apology if they had genuine love for the Christian community. 

In a TV interview, Modi had said that the energy he possesses cannot come from a biological body and only god could give him this type of energy.

Formed in March 2023, the social media handle of Kerala Congress has 26 members in their team that decides the social media strategy across digital platforms for the Congress in Kerala. Their memes, which primarily draw humour from popular Malayalam films, poking fun at everything from the Election Commission (EC)’s inaction against hate speeches to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘close relations’ with the Adani group, had become popular during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.