Pope Leo XIV has been a relatively quiet pope compared to his predecessor, yet he is still attracting conspiracy theorists who were adamant that his predecessor was on the phone to Klaus Schwab every night.
There are reasonable and important criticisms of the church’s role in the immigration crises plaguing Western Nations, but there are those who are willing to invent quotes about the pope and then menacingly make comments about the safety of the Vatican.
Following the pope’s Christmas Day speech, the internet was flooded with a slew of comments attributed to him, that he either did not say or not in that context.
In one set of comments, a quote was attributed to him, which was in fact, from a quote from a post about bishops, by a social media user.
The pope has also been attacked for the following comments:
All of the conversations that I had during my time, both in Türkiye and Lebanon, including with many Muslims, was precisely concentrated on the topic of peace and respect for people of different religions.
I know that, as a matter of fact, that has not always been the case. I know that in Europe there are many times fears that are present but oftentimes generated by people who are against immigration and trying to keep out people who may be from another country, another religion, another race.
And in that sense, I would say that we all need to work together, one of the values of this trip is precisely to raise the world’s attention to the possibility that dialogue and friendship between Muslims and Christians is possible.
I think one of the great lessons that Lebanon can teach to the world is precisely showing a land where Islam and Christianity are both present and are respected and that there is a possibility to live together to be friends.
Stories, testimonies, witnesses that we heard even in the past two days of people helping each other; Christians with Muslims, both of whom had had their villages destroyed, for example, were saying we can come together and work together.
I think those are lessons that would be important also to be heard in Europe or North America. We should perhaps be a little less fearful and look for ways of promoting authentic dialogue and respect.
These have been taken as the pope giving his blessing for mass immigration from Muslim countries. It is actually a signal to two groups, one is to Muslims in Muslim majority countries where Christians are ostracised. The other is to Europe and North America, perhaps especially to Europe. Europe major countries where the ‘right wing parties’ are led by lesbians, atheists, feminists and proaborts. We can work to keep a Christian Europe, although as which politicians are doing that effectively at the moment is anyone’s guess, and it does not mean that we have to do cheap Koran burning stunts rather than getting our own houses in order first.
It should also be pointed out, since most of this aggression towards Pope Leo XIV is coming from the USA, that clearly President Donald Trump shares his sentiments about Muslims and Christians being friends.
Lastly, comments that the pope made in early November have gone viral, where he called for access to the sacraments for people being detained before deportation.
Outraged commentators said some variation of ‘Pope Leo XIV says if you are not kind to foreigners you go to hell!’
Actually, those were not quite his words and his actual words were not his either, they are a direct quote from Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Matthew:
I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.
This is a very serious topic and we can only assume that those posting deliberately made up quotes are not serious about it.
You can hear the pope state here that no one is saying that there should be ‘open borders’ and states that illegal immigration is a matter for the courts.
There is a concerted effort to stoke anger at Pope Leo XIV and to claim that he is a determined critic of Donald Trump, but the reality is that he is no such thing.
Trump, to his credit, has not fallen into the trap that he fell into with Pope Francis by letting the media bait him into a war of words. In fact, he was quite gracious in a recent interview.
Catholics will do well to follow his lead and not get baited into hating the Holy Father because of fake quotes attributed to him.
There are lots of fake quotes going around.