San Lorenzo's hope for boost from the hand of Pope Francis

The arrival of former Argentine BA City archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the Vatican has shaken up the football scenario. San Lorenzo’s authorities are already planning advertising strategies to promote the Boedo club in the world.

With Bergoglio’s San Lorenzo card already flowing on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, the club’s leadership issued an official statement celebrating his election to head the Roman Catholic Church.

“Know that for us you are not just any other Pope, or the first Argentine, Latin American or Jesuit Pope. You are the San Lorenzo’s Pope or, in football terms, the cuervo Pope,” the document read in reference to the knickname San Lorenzo’s supporters are locally called by.

The Italian sport manufaturer Lottio even contacted San Lorenzo’s heads and designed the T-shirt showing the image of Francis that the team of Juan Antonio Pizzi wore to perform its first “miracle” under "Bergoglio’s era": the triumph against Colón last Saturday.

Just like the traditional papamobile, in Boedo they might be planning to set a “cuervomobile” in the Vatican in a move that rather than honoring Francis aims at gaining foreign associates and have European marketing and advertising companies develop the high positioning of the San Lorenzo brand.

Friendly matches with European clubs could also be part of a promotional agenda that has brought religion, football and business together.