Pope Francis joins Instagram

Pope Francis posted his debut Instagram photo on Saturday morning, on his newly-opened @Franciscus account.

The image showed Pope Francis with his head bowed in prayer, with the caption "Pray for me" written in nine languages.

The pontiff joined the photo sharing platform on the third anniversary of his inauguration as leader of the Catholic Church.

Instagram CEO, Kevin Systrom, met Pope Francis at the Vatican in February.

Systrom posted a photo of the meeting on Instagram, writing: "Today I had the honor of meeting Pope Francis. We spoke about the power of images to unite people across different cultures and languages. It was by far one of the most memorable experiences of my life!"

Pope Francis is already big on Twitter, which he joined shortly after his inauguration in March 2013. He has 8.89 million followers and often tweets the words "pray for me" there too.