Pope Leo XIV triggered a surge in the number of hits on Wikipedia in 2025.
As the Wikimedia Foundation announced on Tuesday, the article about the pontiff elected in May was one of the most popular entries of the year with more than 22 million page views, reaching fifth place in the English-language annual ranking.
Immediately after the announcement of Robert Francis Prevost's election in May, traffic on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites increased massively, according to the press release.
At times, the foundation registered up to 800,000 page views per second - a new record. In normal operation, the average is around 130,000 hits per second.
The most clicked Wikipedia pages in 2025
The demand for information about Leo XIV thus outstripped numerous political and pop culture-related articles that usually dominate the top list.
The article on Pope Francis also recorded significantly higher access figures in the wake of his death and landed in 11th place in the annual ranking.
The most clicked article on the English-language Wikipedia in 2025 was the entry on Charlie Kirk, who was murdered in the summer.
His page was accessed around twice as often as the one about Leo XIV.
The list of people who died in the current year followed in second place, while third place went to the US murderer Ed Gein, about whom Netflix published a documentary.
In fourth place was the article about US President Donald Trump.