Almost immediately after the first American pope — Robert Francis Prevost, now known as Pope Leo XIV — was installed, it didn’t take long for those on social media to start using him politically.
This became particularly acute after a very viral post in which Prevost seems to blame President Donald Trump for promoting “white supremacist ideology,” which was shared across various platforms.
But is the video real?
The original post — archived from an account on TikTok, @grv12095oio — stated, in a caption, “Trump the immigration policies you’ve implemented are a blatant trampling on both the teachings of the church and the promises of the American dream,” which were opening words of the alleged address.
“You’ve made a big show of declaring a state of emergency at the border, dispatched the military to enforce the law there, canceled birthright citizenship, and even had law enforcement officers barge into places like churches and schools, which are supposed to be inviolable, to arrest illegal immigrants,” the address purportedly said.
“You’re turning the United States into a country which has no room for tolerance and going completely against the diversity that the U.S. has always advocated,” the clip continued. “In order to win those so-called votes and pander to some extreme voters, you’ve resorted to all means.”
Those policies have been used, Prevost supposedly said, “to create external enemies and have intensified social conflicts.”
“All of your actions are a hideous manifestation of white supremacist ideology,” the video continued.
“What’s more, the incident of you accepting an airplane from the cartel is truly despicable,” the clip added, seeming to reference Qatar’s offer of a 747 to stand in as a presidential plane due to delays in the new Air Force One from Boeing.
“Such behavior of yours has seriously damaged the image of public officials,” the video added.
“You’re simply using your power as a tool to seek personal gains. I, Robert Prevost, firmly oppose everything that you stand for. Every single thing you’ve done is dragging the United States into the abyss of darkness and undermining the very foundation of this country. You must take responsibility for your actions.”
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Now, what should have triggered several alarm bells — aside from the cadences, which are so blatantly computerized they sound directly taken from the voice synthesizer on a 1990s-era Macintosh — is the fact that the Chicago-raised Prevost apparently now speaks English with an Italian accent.
While Chicago does have a distinct accent of its own and Prevost has spent much of his career either in Peru or Rome, this is not how he speaks. Instead, this is an NBC News report of the ceremony from which the video portion of this clip seems to have been taken, speaking in his real voice:
Before he was elected pope at the conclave that replaced the late Pope Francis, then-Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost had expressed some skepticism over the Trump administration’s policies on immigration and deportation, including Vice President J.D. Vance — a Roman Catholic convert — defending those policies on Christian theological grounds.
“There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that,” Vance said during a Fox News interview, the National Catholic Reporter noted.
Prevost’s social media account shared a post which asked Trump and Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele if they saw “the suffering” caused by imprisoning individuals via El Salvador’s CECOT prison.
“Is your conscious not disturbed?” the writer in the piece Prevost shared, a Roman Catholic analyst, said, according to The New York Times. “How can you stay quiet?”
The article also called Vance’s interpretation of Christian doctrine “wrong.”
While The New York Times could not independently confirm whether Cardinal Prevost ran the account — or if it was operated by a staff member — the account was connected to a phone number and email address believed to be tied to him. Nearly all the posts, which date to 2011, shared articles, statements and comments made by other church leaders — not by the cardinal himself.
In July 2015, the account reposted an article by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York that described Mr. Trump’s “anti-immigrant rhetoric” as “problematic.” Three years later, the account shared a post from Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago, saying there was “nothing remotely Christian, American or morally defensible” about the administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents.
However, according to PolitiFact, Prevost has voted in Republican primaries in his home state, although the Illinois State Board of Elections does not require voters to register with either party, and his affiliation is “undeclared,” as per the Will County clerk’s office.
Prevost has not, however, waded into political issues aside from those which affect the church — specifically LGBT ones, where his position remains conventionally Christian.
He has continued to affirm these statements as pope; on Friday, the Associated Press reported, Leo XIV told reporters during a speech in the Vatican that the family is founded upon a “stable union between a man and a woman.”
While he did mention the dignity of immigrants, he also mentioned the dignity of the unborn.
“In addition, no one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, citizens and immigrants alike,” he said during the remarks.
The clip about Trump was nevertheless shared on multiple platforms — where community notes on X observed that this clearly wasn’t Leo XIV’s voice.
Damn! Pope Leo XIV tells Trump that the immigration policies he’s implemented are a blatant trampling on both the teachings of the Church and the promises of the American Dream! Amen! ???????????????????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/6LaknPVBst
— Suzie rizzio (@Suzierizzo1) May 14, 2025
Given no apparent evidence of these words being uttered by Leo XIV before or after he became pope and the obviously different accent — not to mention the computerized cadence — we rate this as false.
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