Fake News: The Pope Does NOT Want You to Pray for a One World Religion

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: The Pope Does NOT Want You to Pray for a One World Religion

Does the Pope want you to pray for a "One World Religion"? No, that's not true: a 2016 video that suddenly went viral in 2019 after being shared in several Facebook groups and on several Facebook pages uses clips from a 2016 video of the Pope asking people to pray for dialogue between people of different faiths and claims that means he wants you to pray for a "One World Religion".

The video was posted on YouTube (archived here) on January 13, 2016 by a channel named Truthstream Media under the title "The Pope Wants You to Pray for a One World Religion". It was described like this:

This is the closest you are going to get to a commercial for the one world religion they want to enact.

PS - here's the original Pope vid: https://youtu.be/Nq7us5Lf5IU Funny they want to bring the world together to "have a discussion" but they've closed comments for the video.

This is the video in question:

It starts off with various accusations against the United Nations and then claims the Pope put out a video asking his followers to pray for "everyone to unite under a One World Religion". The video then shows a montage of more fearmongering against the United Nations and at the end goes back to the claims about the Pope by showing some clips taken from a video put out by "The Pope Video" channel on YouTube in 2016, saying it is basically a "commercial for a One World Religion".

That video (originally at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq7us5Lf5IU) is now unavailable but you can still watch it at The Internet Archive, where we obtained following copy which was originally titled: "The Pope Video - Inter-religious Dialogue"

The channel "The Pope Video" is an official Vatican project described as:

The Pope Video is a global initiative of the Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network (Apostleship of Prayer) to spread the Holy Father's monthly prayer intentions related to the challenges facing humanity and the mission of the Church. Every month we accompany Pope Francis in his prayer requests.

This is the text of the subtitles of the video:

Pope: Most of the planet's inhabitants declare themselves believers. This should lead to dialogue among religions. We should not stop praying for it and collaborating with those who think differently.

Lama: I have confidence in the Buddha.

Rabi: I believe in God.

Priest: I believe in Jesus Christ.

Islamic Leader: I believe in God, Allah.

Pope: Many think differently, feel differently, seeking God or meeting God in different ways. In this crowd, in this range of religions, there is only one certainty we have for all: we are all children of God.

Lama: I believe in love.

Rabi: I believe in love.

Islamic Leader: I believe in love.

Priest: I believe in love.

Pope: I hope you will spread my prayer request this month: "That sincere dialogue among men and women of different faiths may produce the fruits of peace and justice." I have confidence in your prayers.

Notice where we highlighted all the places where the Pope mentions different religions doing things differently and believing different things. That doesn't sound like "One World Religion" at all. And the prayer request is not for such a religion to be created or instituted, it is for a "sincere dialogue".

For a video from a channel calling itself "Truthstream" this clip certainly muddies the water with several unsubstantiated or outright wrong claims about what the Pope says that you can plainly see for yourself if you watch the original video (or even the clip from Truthstream itself, the title does not even match the Pope's actual words).

Interestingly enough CrowdTangle data shows over 97,000 people engaged with the YouTube clip on Facebook, more than the 81,973 who actually watched it according to YouTube:

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  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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