Justin Bieber is in trouble again – not with the law – but this time with the Vatican.
The Canadian pop star took a private after-hours tour of Vatican City during his visit to Rome earlier this month.
As part of his visit to the Vatican, Bieber visited the Vatican Museums and the Papal Apartments.
According to reports, Vatican staff scolded Bieber for kicking around a soccer ball around in the corridors of the historic buildings during the private tour. The Vatican isn’t commenting about the incident.
But Bieber posted this picture on his Instagram account.
The Vatican enforces a strict set of rules for visitors who seek access to the Museums, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Gardens and Saint Peter’s Basilica, including a dress code: no sleeveless tops, miniskirts, shorts, nor hats. It appears Bieber didn’t get the memo.
Maybe Bieber is still fuming about the time, in 2012, that the Vatican boasted then-Pope Benedict had beaten out Bieber to set a percentage record for most retweets by his followers? At that time, Pope Benedict had 2.1 million followers on Twitter, only eight days after his first tweet. In comparison, Bieber had about 31.7 million followers.
As of publishing time today, former pope Benedict’s Twitter account has 12,900 followers while Bieber has 55.8 million followers. The current pontiff, Pope Francis, has 4.6 million followers.
This is not the first time Bieber has made a Vatican faux pas. In 2012, talk show host David Letterman ripped into Bieber for mistakenly referring to the Sistine Chapel as the Sixteenth Chapel during an appearance on The Late Show.
“Canadian high school!” Letterman remarked in response to the gaffe, to applause from the audience.
