Fact check: New pope hit by wave of AI-generated fake news – DW – 05/27/2025

Ever since Pope Leo XIV has been elected the new Head of the Catholic Church, social media has been inundated with AI-generated deepfake videos and images claiming to show the new pontiff. The news portal of the Vatican has warned that fake messages attributed to the new pope are circulating online. DW's Fact check team has taken a look at some of the claims.

Claim: Pope Leo XIV is said to have responded to a letter of Burkina Faso junta leader Ibrahim Traore in a video posted to YouTube. "I have read your words not once, but many times (…), because in your voice I have heard not merely the anger of a president, but the righteous cry of a continent long wounded by the dual blades of neglect and exploitation," the Pope is quoted in the video that's been shared in part on other social media platforms such as X.

DW Fact check: Fake

The 36-minute video took footage from a papal audience with journalists on May 12, as we found through a reverse image search. The video used a morphing technique to make the Pope's lip movements line up with the AI-generated audio recording. That's confirmed by Vatican News, the official news portal of the Holy See.

The YouTube channel itself admits that the video is faked, this detail buried after a long wall of text: "This video is a work of fiction" inspired by Traore, who came to power in a 2022 coup condemned by the UN.

"While some elements are based on real events, the situations and dialogues described are entirely imaginary and do not reflect any actual events. Any resemblance to real-life facts is purely coincidental."

The video featured "altered or synthetic content," and "sound or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated," a disclaimer reads.

The Pope is just one of many prominent figures used by Traore's supporters to boost his image — AI-generated songs and videos using the likeness of stars such as Rihanna, Beyonce and Justin Bieber.

The video is manipulated — the Pope has never made such statements. The Pope's speeches, addresses, and texts can be found in full at the official website vatican.va and news of his activities are available at vaticannews.va.

There are other giveaways that this video is not real but rather a manipulation: Pope Leo XIV was born as Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, Illinois in the US. He is a native speaker of American English with a mild Chicago accent. 

A closer look at the video shows the mouth movements of the Pope are blurry with frequent glitching around the microphone area. We found the original video where the Pope is talking to media representatives on May 12, published on the EWTN Global Catholic Network's channel. He doesn't mention Trump in his speech and is speaking Italian.

 
Claim: "Pope Leo XIV intentionally ignored an LGBTQ rainbow flag by looking the other way when he approached it," a viral post on X with more than 12 million views claims.  

DW Fact check: False

The Pope is seen walking along a corridor lined up with throngs of people, alternating between shaking hands to his left and right side. He is turning to the other side before the flag appears on screen, as seen in this original video published by Vatican News.

However, the multicolored "rainbow" flag in the video is not the LGBTQ flag: it's the Italian peace flag with the Italian word for peace (pace) on it.

While the two flags look similar, there are some key differences: The LGBTQ flag has six stripes, with red at the top and purple at the bottom, while the peace flag has seven stripes, with purple at the top and red at the bottom. It also features an extra shade of light blue.

As AI-generated content gets more sophisticated, it's important to be on the lookout for inconsistencies, double check sources and to report fake content to stop it from spreading further. Case in point: One YouTube channel posting fake sermons has since been shut down.

Edited by: Rayna Breuer and Rachel Baig