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Claim: Pope Francis has resigned and appointed Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle to succeed him as the Catholic Church’s new pontiff.
Rating: FALSE
Why we fact-checked this: A video bearing the claim was posted on YouTube by a channel named “Business Hook” on January 13. As of writing, it has 42,735 views, 499 likes, and 104 comments.
The video’s title reads: “JUST NOW Pope Francis Resigns, Cardinal Luis Tagle Appointed as New Pope.” It begins with a supposed news report about Francis’ abdication, followed by a narrator saying, “In this historic moment for the Catholic Church, Pope Francis steps down, bringing to a close a transformative decade of mercy, inclusion, and justice.”
On TikTok, thousands of users shared a misleading video about Pope Francis’ supposed retirement and Cardinal Tagle’s appointment as the next pope. The video, posted by user highlandcity2024 on January 11, generated over 1.1 million views, 52,000 reactions, 1,000 comments, and 5,000 shares as of writing.
The facts: Francis remains the pope and is not set to be replaced by Tagle. There are no reports from the Vatican or other reputable news sources confirming the claim.
The misleading YouTube and TikTok videos used spliced clips taken from various news reports to create a false narrative about Francis’ supposed retirement and Tagle’s alleged appointment as the new pope.
The opening clip shown in the YouTube video was from an April 2013 video from the parody website The Onion and is not a real news report.
Other clips used in the misleading videos were taken from news reports in 2013 about Pope Benedict’s resignation from the papacy.
The 88-year-old pontiff has also put a stop to rumors of his retirement through his memoirs, “Life: My Story Through History,” published in March 2024, and “Hope,” released on January 14, 2025, where he stated that he has no plans of resigning like his predecessor.
Popes are elected, not appointed: Contrary to the claim, Francis cannot select his successor. The leader of the Catholic Church is selected through secret ballot voting by cardinals in what is known as a papal conclave.
On March 13, 2013, Francis assumed the papacy after he was elected by 115 cardinals to replace Benedict XVI.
Dubious details: The misleading YouTube and TikTok videos pose as legitimate news reports, but they merely rely on spliced clips and narrated audio generated using artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
According to Resemble.AI, an artificial intelligence voice detector, the voice of the supposed reporter in the misleading YouTube video is fake. AI often struggles to copy human emotions and tones in imitating human voices. The tool analyzes audio with 90%+ accuracy to determine whether it is generated by AI.
A reverse image search also shows that the clips used in the misleading videos were taken from the broadcast reports of journalist Cynthia McFadden during the papal selection process in 2013, while others were from more recent videos taken from Cardinal Tagle’s homily at the Closing Mass of the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress and Pope Francis’ speech at the US Congress in 2016. – Reinnard Balonzo/Rappler.com
Reinnard Balonzo is a senior journalism student at Bicol University-College of Arts and Letters. An Aries Rufo Journalism Fellow of Rappler for 2024, he is also chairperson of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines-Bicol.
This fact check was reviewed by a member of Rappler’s research team and a senior editor. Learn more about Rappler’s fact-checking mentorship program here.
Keep us aware of suspicious Facebook pages, groups, accounts, websites, articles, or photos in your network by contacting us at factcheck@rappler.com. Let us battle disinformation one Fact Check at a time.
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