Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/April 20 to 26, 2025

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (April 20 to 26, 2025)

Prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, GN22, CAWylie, and Rahcmander.

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The Pope is pop, the Pope is pop, pop doesn't spare anyone!

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Pope Francis	6,826,504	In 2013, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was just planning on retiring in Buenos Aires when #3 resigned and thus he had to fly to the conclave in Rome. He wound up elected as the new Pontiff, choosing a papal name homaging Saint Francis of Assisi, and never stepped foot in his native Argentina again. Noted for his Jesuit humility - he always wore simple white clothes and lived in the guest house rather than the Papal apartments - and a progressive agenda, Francis had already spent some time in the hospital this year due to respiratory diseases, and less than a day after giving his Easter address at St. Peter's Square (that included a call for a ceasefire in Gaza) and receiving the visit of US vice-president JD Vance, he suffered a stroke and died at the age of 88.
2	Sinners (2025 film)	3,054,880	A saint man directly followed by Sinners, now that's ironic. Michael B. Jordan plays twins in 1930s Mississippi getting unexpected and dangerous visitors at the opening of their juke joint. Reviewers and audiences alike where enthralled by Ryan Coogler's mixture of period piece, supernatural horror, and blues musical, and with the box office having passed its $100 million budget it should soon become profitable.
3	Pope Benedict XVI	2,530,935	#1's predecessor Joseph Ratzinger, who resigned his papacy and lived on as pope emeritus until 2022. There was talk of #1 resigning, but he ultimately chose to serve for life.
4	WrestleMania 41	2,381,330	On April 20, the second night of the annual WWE event, John Cena (pictured) won his 17th championship, setting a record for the title. Spending the past seven weeks as a heel, Cena hit Cody Rhodes with a low blow to secure the victory.
5	2025 NFL draft	1,885,673	Gridiron chose the college football players that will join the next season, with the Tennessee Titans using their top pick on Cam Ward of the University of Miami.
6	Pope John Paul II	1,810,868	"The pope was shot at point blank, pop doesn't spare anyone!" Before #3 we had 27 years of the Polish Karol Wojtyla, making him the third longest-serving pope after Pius IX and the first one, St. Peter. John Paul II was fairly popular - even if as mentioned previously, a hitman tried to kill him once - for going all around the world, attempting to improve the Catholic Church's relations with other religions, fighting against dictatorships, and helping ending the communist rule in his country and the rest of Europe.
7	List of popes	1,653,320	When Jesus told one of his apostles "I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church", the one eventually known as Saint Peter followed that founding the Diocese of Rome that became the center of the Catholic Church, and the bishop of that diocese earned the title of 'Pope', derived from the Greek word for 'father'. #1 was the 266th Pontiff, although the list of popes is fairly complicated, as it includes some of the antipopes that claimed to be Bishop of Rome, but are not currently recognized by the Catholic Church.
8	Pope	1,177,472	The leader of the world's 1.28–1.41 billion Catholics. Currently, it's sede vacante until the end of #25.
9	Deaths in 2025	1,022,885	Sing with me, if it's just for today Maybe tomorrow, the Good Lord will take you away...
10	Pope John Paul I	1,003,197	1978 was the year of three popes: Paul VI died on August 6, and later that month Albino Luciani, Patriarch of Venice, was elected pontiff, naming himself after his predecessor and the previous one (John XXIII). Yet he died after only 33 days, leading to a second conclave that put #6 at the Holy See.
11	Conclave (film)	957,802	One of the frontrunners of award season was this adaptation of a 2016 novel concerning a fictional election of #8, whose accolades included the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and along with commercial success Conclave also got a surprising following among the meme-making youth, that among other things compared the intrigue witnessed by Ralph Fiennes to Mean Girls! Given it had hit streaming platforms shortly before #1 died, plenty of people decided to follow His Holiness's death by checking the movie out, if only to have an idea of what happens during a papal election.
12	ChatGPT	899,709	The first report featuring this chatbot was also the report dealing with the death of #3. Now, 28 months later, its purpose has changed from "generating a Shakespeare dialogue in the style of an Italian mobster" to giving millions of people therapy.
13	2025 Pahalgam attack	881,860	On April 22, five terrorists attacked Hindu tourists near Pahalgam (Baisaran Valley pictured), a popular travel area in India. Twenty-six people were killed and 20 others were injured, in the deadliest incident since Mumbai in 2008. The attack fueled tensions between India and Pakistan, and, on April 24, border skirmishes began again along the Line of Control.
14	Shedeur Sanders	775,019	On May 1, 2024, Deion Sanders tweeted the prediction that his son, who was quarterback for his father's college team, would be one of the first five players to be picked in #5. Nearly a year later, 143 selections went by, before Shedeur was selected by the Cleveland Browns, their seventh choice in the three-day event.
15	The Last of Us (TV series)	753,786	HBO continues to show season 2 of this show adapting an acclaimed video game series.
16	Indus Waters Treaty	711,236	On April 23, following #13, the government of India suspended a bi-lateral water distribution treaty, which made the Indus River and its Indian tributaries available to Pakistan. The treaty had been in effect since 1960.
17	Hailee Steinfeld	667,493	The female lead (and one of the few non-Black actors, though she is mixed race herself) of #2, who started her career as a teenager downright getting an Oscar nod for True Grit, and has since gotten many critical and/or commercial hits to her name.
18	Simla Agreement	622,425	On April 25, in abeyance with and response to #16, Pakistan suspended this peace treaty, signed in 1972, with India, effectively closing all land and air trade routes between the countries.
19	Kesari Chapter 2	617,075	This spiritual sequel of a 2019 film centers around C. Sankaran Nair (pictured), an Indian lawyer and statesman tasked to investigate the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The film was released on April 18, the anniversary of the event, and a third film in the series was announced to be underway.
20	Natalia Grace	601,328	Good American Family will air its series finale on April 30, telling the weird story of an American couple who adopted an Eastern European child with dwarfism and decided "There is something wrong with Natalia", followed by changing her documents to say she was a grown woman and dumping her alone in an apartment.
21	A Minecraft Movie	596,930	"First we mine, then we craft. LET'S MINECRAFT!" The best-selling game of all time inspired Hollywood's highest-grossing film of the year so far, and second of the world after Chinese cartoon Ne Zha 2. May starts to bring in the summer blockbusters, and wonder if the month's three heavy -hitters can make similar numbers to the $815 million of Minecraft.
22	Luis Antonio Tagle	595,144	This 67-year-old Filipino cardinal is considered one of the frontrunners to succeed #1 in #25. If elected #8, he would be the first pontiff of Asian descent.
23	The Last of Us season 2	579,909	The latest episodes in #15. The plot still follows The Last of Us Part II, and a few dissatisfied viewers started spoiling everyone regarding the plot developments they disliked yet gamers had already known.
24	Andor (TV series)	576,707	In 2022, the Disney+ show centered around one of the protagonists of Rogue One surprised the Star Wars fandom and became one of the most beloved pieces of the franchise. After a slight delay due to the 2023 strikes, the first three episodes of season 2 arrived to continue showing the formation of the Rebel Alliance, the machinations of the Galactic Empire as they finished the Death Star, and Diego Luna as Cassian Andor being caught in the middle of it.
25	2025 papal conclave	562,307	Keeping off Vatican City is the biggest thing that will happen there in the next month, as cardinals from all over the world arrive to choose the next #6. The names of several (presumably) leading candidates (left) have been floated around for years. Hopefully we don't see a terrorist attack like in #11 or Angels & Demons.