Pope

Are social media posts claiming that Pope Leo XIV and a long list of celebrities each filed a $50 million lawsuit against a news host for "vicious, calculated defamation" real? No, that's not true: None of the celebrities named in the posts made any such statement. The claims came from a spam operation managed from Vietnam that uses AI-generated Facebook…

Did Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and chairman of Block, join the AI company Anthropic? No, that's not true: There have been no news announcements that Dorsey has joined Anthropic. After the true announcement that Andrej Karpathy, the co-founder of OpenAI, was joining Anthropic, a trend of copycat joke announcements popped up on social media. Among the copycat posts…

Are social media posts claiming celebrities "went live at 3 a.m." with a message saying they received a threat meant to silence them real? No, that's not true: None of the celebrities named in the posts made any such statement. The claims came from AI-generated Facebook posts produced by a spam operation managed from Vietnam. Among the false posts Lead…

Does a real photo show Pope Leo XIV rocking Nikes with his clerical vestments? Yes, that's true: This is a real photo that appears in a trailer for a documentary about the time Pope Leo XIV spent in Rome before he was elected to be pope. The context for the photo offered in the trailer and the lack of traditional…

Did Donald Trump post an image of himself helping Lady Liberty give birth to a mini-Trump wrapped in an American flag? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that Trump posted the image on his Truth Social account. The image has a watermark of a well-known meme creator and was posted on the creator's Instagram account. The claim appeared…

Did Pope Leo XIV blast White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt or her resume during a television interview? No, that's not true: Social media posts making the claim were created and distributed by a spam operation managed from Vietnam that uses AI tools to create click bait content targeted at American and European audiences. There is no evidence that the…

Did Donald Trump post on Truth Social that he has access to "the Vatican files", boasting he could "bring down the Papacy, the Vatican and the entire Catholic Church overnight"? No, that's not true: This is a fake post that never appeared on Truth Social. A search of Google News showed no reporting about this post being made or deleted.…

Did President Donald Trump urge his Catholic supporters to start a "MAGA Reformation" and form a new "American Catholicism"? No, that's not true: The account that started a rumor describes itself as satire. No news organizations reported the purported story, which would have been heavily covered. The claim originated from a post (archived here) on X published by @HalfwayPost on…

Did Pope Leo XIV say, "Iran can have a nuclear weapon," as President Donald Trump suggested on the White House lawn in April 2026? No, that's not true: The pope has repeatedly argued against war and denounced nuclear weapons. In March 2026, he posted on X, "Let us #PrayTogether that nations move toward effective disarmament, particularly nuclear disarmament, and that…

Did Pope Leo XIV misquote Jesus as saying, "Blessed are the peacemakers, but woe to those who manipulate religion"? No, that's not true: The pope wasn't reading a Scripture passage at the time; he was delivering a homily on peace while in Bamenda, Cameroon, on a tour of Africa. The sentence in question excerpted a famous line from the Gospel…