Wikipedia has announced that Pope Leo XIV's profile was their 5th most-read article of 2025. Their list is comprised of the top 20 most-read English Wikipedia articles of 2025 with topics including politics, culture, and international tragedy.
With his election to the papacy in May of 2025, millions of people flooded Pope Leo XIV's profile article on Wikipedia to learn more about the new Roman pontiff.
At the height of interest, Pope Leo's article received around 800,000 hits per second which is more than 6x the normal traffic levels – a new all-time record for Wikipedia.
However, Pope Leo XIV wasn't the only Roman pontiff to make the most-read list. The profile of Pope Francis, who passed in April of 2025, came in at the 11th most-read Wikipedia article.
Tragedy was a common theme among the most-read articles with Charlie Kirk taking the #1 spot and the topic of “Deaths in 2025” coming in second place.
