This image of Pope Francis falling during a mass and thereafter testing postive for COVID-19.
According to the post, the Pope was taken to Salvator Mundi International Hospital after the fall, and he tested positive for COVID-19. It adds that his seven helpers have put themselves in 14-day self-quarantine., However, a reverse image search shows that the photo published alongside the post was taken in July 2016, when the head of the Catholic Church fell at the altar of the Jasna Gora Monastery in Częstochowa, Poland while celebrating mass., Pope Francis has not tested positive for coronavirus, and held a service at an empty St Peter’s Square in the Vatican on 28 March, three days after the post was published., According to the Holy See’s Press Office, there are currently four confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Vatican and not 14 as claimed. The latest cases include an employee of the merchandise office and two workers from the Vatican Museums., PesaCheck has looked into a photo of Pope Francis falling due to COVID-19 and finds it to be FALSE., This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms., By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds., Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content., This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Fact-Checker Simon Muli and edited by PesaCheck Deputy Editor Ann Ngengere, The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi., PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org., PesaCheck is a joint initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with additional funding support from the International Budget Partnership (Kenya) and Twaweza, in partnership with a coalition of local media organisations, and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ)., Written by, Written by
FALSE: This image of Pope Francis falling during mass is from 2016, not 2020