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| - In March 2026, a rumor circulated online that Pope Leo XIV unsealed the results of U.S. President Donald Trump's 1970 IQ test from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School live on TV.
For example, a Facebook post (archived) shared on March 30 read, "BREAKING: ṪRUMP ERUPTS After Pope Leo XIV UNSEALS His 1970 WHARTON IQ APTITUDE TEST LIVE ON TV — 'GENIUS?' THINK AGAIN."
The Facebook page Issa shared the claim repeatedly beginning on March 21 (archived, archived, archived). One version of the claim also spread to a different Facebook group (archived) and Snopes readers contacted us to ask whether the rumor was true.
We first used search engines such as Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo to locate possible evidence from credible sources about the alleged TV program where Pope Leo revealed Trump's IQ test score (archived, archived, archived, archived). If the story was true, journalists with reputable news outlets, such as The Associated Press or Reuters, would have widely reported on it. That was not the case.
Trump graduated from Wharton, a business and liberal arts school at the University of Pennsylvania, in 1968 — two years before posts claimed he took the alleged IQ test at the school.
In short, the rumor was fictional. It appeared to originate from the aforementioned Facebook page Issa and blog pages that use artificial intelligence tools to create inspiring or shocking stories about public figures. Therefore, we've rated this claim false.
Creators of such content capitalize on social media users' willingness to believe and share the made-up stories, profiting from advertising revenue on external websites to which the posts link. (Snopes has previously reported on the business strategy.)
We contacted a manager of the Issa Facebook page to ask whether it had created the false story about Pope Leo and Trump and why it shared it without a disclaimer to note its inauthenticity. We will update this story if we receive a response.
The page's posts spreading the false rumor about Pope Leo and Trump included links in the comment sections to an article on an advertisement-filled blog. The comments promised more details about Leo's alleged reveal in the linked article.
That article had several indications of being AI-generated text. Most notably, the article replaced the letter "N" with the Cyrillic letter "П" throughout the text. Reputable news media outlets would likely not make such an error. It is possible this spelling was intentional to avoid moderation tools or ad restrictions.
GPTZero, a tool that aims to detect AI-generated text, also determined with a high level of certainty that the article and one Facebook post's caption were AI-generated.
AI-detection tools like GPTZero are fallible. Snopes cautions people against using them for definitive answers on media's authenticity without supporting evidence.
In February and March 2026, the same Facebook page that shared the rumor about Pope Leo unsealing the results of Trump's IQ test also falsely claimed that actor Rowan Atkinson (archived) and late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert (archived) did the same.
Snopes has investigated similar rumors in the past. For example, in December 2024, we debunked claims Trump scored 73 on an IQ test while at the New York Military Academy. The president's IQ score has not been publicly released.
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