In the “Customizer > Footer Settings”, the notation for the field box to enter text says we can use HTML.
When I tried to use HTML tags, the HTML tags were displayed in the footer, so this means the theme is escaping the HTML syntax so it gets displayed as text.
Is this a bug or was this intended and you meant that HTML is “not” allowed?
Your guess is right. Due to the data sanitization. You can only use plain text here and Not HTML. This text will be correct in the upcoming theme update