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FACT CHECK: ALTERED, WRONG translations used in Pope Francis video

The video shows Pope Francis confessing that the Catholic church “changed God’s law big time.”

Facebook user Adnilre Shellane Banaag 2024-04-29 Fake

The circulating clip of Pope Francis allegedly confessing that the Catholic church has “changed God’s law big time” contained false translations.

A clip of Pope Francis supposedly revealing that the Catholic church “changed God’s law big time” and calling it “the Mother of Harlots” has been posted on Facebook (FB). The video was falsely translated to fool netizens.

Posted on April 29 by a Filipino FB user, the one-minute and 12-second clip shows the Pontiff speaking in Latin and supposedly revealing the Catholic church’s deceptions, while English subtitles were displayed.

Starting from the 34-second mark, the Pope allegedly said:

“You see we, the leaders in the Catholic church, really changed God’s law big time. We got rid of the second law, changed the fourth law and the[n] we divided the 10th into two so it would actually look like there is ten commandments still but not really. This is a secret we have been keeping for a long time yet not many people have realised this.You have all been deceived by this silly and crafty deception of ours.

So you now worship idols, and pray to Mary but she is dead. It’s time to stop this nonsense. I say this really simply so don’t be offended. But I am a man of sin mentioned in the Bible. And the Bible calls the Catholic Church the Mother of Harlots.”

This video used fabricated translations to make it seem that the Pope made such revelations.

In the original video message to an American Pentecostal conference in 2014, the Pope only talked about unity among Christians.

VERA FILES FACT CHECK: THE FACTS. The circulating clip of Pope Francis allegedly confessing deceptions of the Catholic church contains fabricated translations. The clip came from the Pope’s video message to an American Pentecostal conference in 2014 where he only talked about unity among Christians.

YouTube channel uCatholic posted a copy of the accurately translated video on Feb. 21, 2014. It was a video message of the pope taken by the late Protestant Bishop Tony Palmer, for a meeting of evangelical protestant leaders in the United States that year.

Nowhere in the video did the Catholic leader speak of the church’s alleged deceptions.

 

This video with wrong translations has been shared as early as 2021 as debunked by Rappler that year and other fact-checking organizations earlier this year.

It resurfaced among Filipino netizens more than two weeks after the Vatican announced that the Pope will embark on an Asian trip in September, but will be skipping the Philippines.

Pope Francis recently appointed Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as his special envoy to the National Eucharistic Congress in the United States to be held from July 17 to 21.

VERA Files has fact-checked other false claims circulated about the Pontiff. (Read Netizens fall for FAKE Pope Francis quote on fasting)

The reel uploaded by the FB user has garnered 920 reactions, 486 comments, 1,100 shares and 201,000 views.


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(Editor's Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)