By Austine J. Crasta –
In a news story that has gone viral, a website by the name of “MCM News” has claimed:
“The Vatican has confirmed in a statement that Pope Francis and two of his aides have tested positive for the novel Coronavirus.”
Those shocked by the claim have been forwarding the news around to inform their circles, as also are those who want to inquire about the truth of the matter. So, is the claim true?
Thankfully, not! The Vatican has not issued any such confirmatory press release. On the contrary, the Director of the Holy See Press office, Matteo Bruni, told journalists on Friday, that the Pope had a “slight indisposition” because of which he preferred to remain at his residence.
Although the Pope’s public appointments in the last three days were cancelled, he continued to meet officials and visitors privately even as speculation suggesting he contracted coronavirus continued to spread.
A Vatican spokesperson, however, shot down the speculation, telling AFP on Sunday, that there was “no evidence to suggest a diagnosis of anything other than a slight ailment.”
In fact, on Sunday noon, the Pope made a public appearance at St. Peter’s Square and led the recitation of the Angelus prayer. Shortly afterwards, he announced to the crowds that he would not be participating in the scheduled spiritual exercises due to a cold which is confining him indoors.
The scare regarding the Pope’s susceptibility to health risks affecting the respiratory system, stems partly from the situation in Italy and the crowds visiting the Vatican, and partly from the fact that Pope Francis lost a part of one lung to a life-threatening pneumonia attack and multiple cysts in his youth.
But no, the Vatican has not “confirmed” the detection of the COVID-19 coronavirus in the Pope’s health investigation. In fact, it has explicitly rejected all such speculation based on the Pope’s diagnostic report.
On the contrary, the website “MCM News” which announced this “breaking news” does not backup its claim regarding the Vatican confirmation statement. In the English media world, it stands alone in making this statement which has since gone viral in sections of the social media.
Interestingly, it files this ‘news’ regarding the Pope contracting coronavirus under the “Showbiz” category and seems to have a fake timestamp which reports varying post times such as ‘Less than a minute ago,’ ‘1 minute ago’, ‘1 hour ago,’ bearing no relation to chronological time.
The website does not have an ‘About Us’ page to give credible information about its owners. Nor does the post, a by-line that identifies its author. No physical address or location mentioned on the ‘Contact Us’ page either.
According to former CIA Cybersecurity Expert and Author of True or False: A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News, Cindy Otis, the domain for “MCM News” was registered “in 2016 by a domain squatter in China” and its “registration was changed three days ago on 26 Feb.,” i.e., the same day the Pope was first seen coughing and blowing his nose!
As of Sunday afternoon, “MCM news” seemed to be down. Cindy tweeted that it may have been taken down. If, however, the website outage was caused by excessive web traffic, this clickbait ‘fake news’ regarding the Pope may have provided just that.
Austine J. Crasta is a theologian, visual artist and a catholic communicator from Bangalore, India and currently based out of Belgium.