Did Pope Leo XIV issue an important prayer for all Americans on July 25, 2025? No, that's not true: A video originating on TikTok features an AI generated likeness of Pope Leo XIV speaking. The voiceover includes a prayer which does not match recently published public messages from the Pope.
The fabricated video first appeared on TikTok account named @prayerswithpopeleo on July 25, 2025 (identical version archived here). This account was deleted from TikTok on July 28, 2025. The post used the following hashtags:
#popeleoxiv #god #jesuslovesyou #jesuschrist #jesus #robertfrancisprevost #prayer
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of the @prayerswithpopeleo TikTok account)
On July 25, 2025 Pope Leo XIV posted only one message on the official @Pontifex account on X (embedded below). The social media post contains a link to the full text of his message (archived here) titled, "Message Of Pope Leo XIV For The 111th World Day Of Migrants And Refugees 2025" that was posted on the Vatican website the same day. The text of the authentic July 25, 2025 message from Pope Leo XIV does not contain similarities with the prayer in the AI generated TikTok video.
The communities that welcome migrants and refugees can be a living witness of a society where the dignity of all as children of God is recognised and in which all are brothers and sisters, part of the same family. #WDMR2025 @vaticanIHD https://t.co/F8QaVR63Qp
-- Pope Leo XIV (@Pontifex) July 25, 2025
A search in the Yahoo.News index (archived here) of partner news sites and wire services for "Pope Leo prayer so all Americans have a good night" returned a link to a reel on Facebook with a copy of the AI-generated @prayerswithpopeleo TikTok video. A google.com search (pictured below and archived here) returned only one result with the exact phrase from the prayer spoken in the TikTok voiceover, "Heavenly Father, tonight I lift up every believer across this great nation from coast to coast. Wrap your arms around your children." That result points to a post on Instagram (archived here) featuring a copy of the AI generated @prayerswithpopeleo TikTok video. No search results pointed to the official @Pontifex Instagram account of Pope Leo XIV or any other official Vatican sources.
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of google.com search results)
The video contains several artifacts common to reels that are artificially generated, such as the overly smooth texture of the skin rendering. Absent is the mole on Pope Leo's left upper lip. Another artifact visible in the video is a distortion in the background, which warps as the subject moves. A detail (pictured below) from a screenshot shows the moment at the start of the video when the doorframe appears to bend as the subject's cheek moves in front of it.
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of the @prayerswithpopeleo TikTok account)
Lead Stories uploaded a clip from the TikTok video to the AI generated content detection tool HIVE moderation. The results pictured in the composite image below were varied, ranging from 0.0 percent to 11.9 percent likely to contain AI generated content. Despite these low individual results, Hive gave an aggregated score of 99.6 percent, stating:
Overall, the video is likely to be AI-Generated.
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of hivemoderation.com results)
On July 28, 2025 the @prayerswithpopeleo account on TikTok had six videos posted. These videos had similar prayers. Notably, each was dedicated to Americans specifically, and featured a request for people to engage with the post by adding personal information. Four seconds in, the voiceover says:
If you are an American drop your name and the state you're watching from in the comments because I wanna pray for you personally.
At the time of writing (Mon Jul 28 23:34:44 2025 UTC) the six videos pictured below and the @prayerswithpopeleo account had been unpublished from TikTok.
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of the @prayerswithpopeleo TikTok account)
