Pope Gregory XIII

About Pope Gregory XIII

Pope Gregory XIII (Ugo Boncompagni, 1502–1585) was a significant religious figure who ascended to the papacy in 1572. His most enduring and globally impactful contribution was the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582, which reformed the Julian calendar to more accurately align with the solar year. This calendar system was so effective that it remains the internationally accepted civil calendar for the modern world. Given this profound, lasting influence, MIT’s Pantheon project ranks him at #477 in historical importance.

Despite this foundational legacy, Pope Gregory XIII currently exhibits a significant Internet Attention Gap. His 2025 annualized Wikipedia pageview count stands at a modest 153K views, resulting in an "underattention" score of -2x relative to his historical rank. This suggests that while he engineered the system by which the world measures time, modern digital attention is lagging. For context, this is considerably less attention than less historically important religious figures like Saint Lawrence (#694 importance) or Francis Xavier (#995 importance), who both garnered significantly higher views.

This disparity is further nuanced by recent trends: while his overall attention is low, his Year-over-Year growth is positive at +19.7%. However, his short-term momentum is declining sharply, dropping -32% between Q1 and Q3 of 2025, indicating that any recent spike in interest is already fading.