Did Pope Francis' dog "refuse to leave his grave"? No, that's not true: None of the variations of the internet rumor support that by links to credible news reports or authentic footage or photographs from the papal funeral, which was covered in detail by multiple journalistic organizations. There is no evidence that the late pontiff kept any pets during his time in the Vatican.
The claim appeared in a video published on YouTube on April 27, 2025, under the title:
Pope Francis' Dog REFUSED To Leave His Grave...Everyone Was Left In Tears.
This is what it looked like on YouTube at the time of writing:
(Source: YouTube screenshot by Lead Stories)
Other similarly themed videos simultaneously appeared here, here, and here.
The claim about Pope Francis and the dog appears to have originated two days earlier, on April 25, 2025, from an article (archived here) published by a website that did not disclose anything about the team behind it (archived here).
One hint suggesting that the narrative did not depict actual events was that the same dog was referred to by different names in different stories. For example, it was claimed to be both Estabon and Lázaro. Yet, no variations of the claim cited a specific source of the information or showed authentic images of the supposed pet taken during the pontiff's last years or at his grave.
A search for the keyword "dog" on the Vatican website for the period of Francis' pontificate produced 15 results manually reviewed by Lead Stories, but none of them discussed the supposed Pope's pet. Furthermore, some results reflected the late Pope's view that people shouldn't prioritize having pets over having children.
A search across the church-owned Vatican News website for the period between Pope Francis' death on April 21, 2025, and this writing didn't show a single mention of the word "dog":
(Source: Vatican News screenshot by Lead Stories)
Pope Francis's funeral took place on April 26, 2025 (archived here). He was buried at St. Mary Major Basilica outside the Vatican (archived here). Its website has a news section (archived here), but, as of this writing, articles related to the pontiff's burial did not discuss any pets. A search for the keyword "dog" across all materials published by the basilica's official online portal produced no results:
(Source: St. Mary Major Basilica screenshot by Lead Stories)
While there is footage from January 2025 suggesting that the late Pope enjoyed watching a show described by the AP as a "performance by circus acrobats, jugglers and dogs", at least two articles published in 2022 by the BBC (archived here) and Salon (archived here) said that he wasn't known to be a pet owner after being elected the head of the Catholic Church.
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Other Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Pope Francis can be found here.
