Does a video posted to social media show Pope Leo XIV turning away from a Pride flag as he moves through a receiving line? No, that's not true: It's not a Pride flag. It's a flag commonly flown at Italian peace marches that says "PACE," which is Italian for "peace". Furthermore, it's not clear the Pope turned specifically away from the flag, as the video shows him alternating from side to side of a double receiving line, greeting and sometimes shaking hands with participants.
The video was part of a May 12, 2025 post on X (archived here) on the @dom_lucre account under the title "🔥🚨BREAKING: ". It continued:
Newly elected Pope Leo XIV intentionally ignored an LGBTQ 🏳️🌈 rainbow flag by looking the other way when he approached it.
Here's what the post looked like on X at the time this fact check was written:
(Source: X.com screenshot by Lead Stories.)
The clip in the X post shows the watermark of the official Vatican News website and matches footage of Pope Leo proceeding out of Paul VI papal audience hall at the Vatican after his first audience with news professionals.
In a higher-resolution version on the Vatican's YouTube account, the flag can be seen at 40:13. Footage before and after the appearance of the PACE flag shows Pope Leo alternating from one side to the other of the aisle as he walks out.
The colors and placement of the word match the flag seen on this page of the Vatican News website. The PACE flag has been used by Italian marchers in protests beginning in the 1960s, according to the Franciscan Friars of California's Campaign Nonviolence. The flag has been adopted by anti-nuclear and peace movements, most recently the Italian "peace from every balcony" movement (archived here) of 2002 during the lead-up to the war in Iraq. The PACE flag is composed of seven horizontal bands with navy blue across the top, followed by green, light blue, green, yellow, orange, and red at the bottom. PACE, in white, is centered across the light blue and green bands.
(Source: YouTube screenshot by Lead Stories.)
Though also composed of horizontal bands of bright color, the flag designed in 1978 by artist Gilbert Baker, commissioned by Harvey Milk, to represent the LGBTQ+ community has six bars in the opposite order, descending from red to orange, yellow, green, blue, purple:
(Source: HRC.org screenshot by Lead Stories.)
Readers looking for more fact checks about Pope Leo and prior popes can start here.
