Guatemala procession falsely portrayed as Pope's funeral
- Published on April 23, 2025 at 09:51
- 2 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
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"Goodbye, the world's Catholic leader, Pope Francis," reads the Indonesian-language caption to the video shared on TikTok on April 22, 2025.
It shows a group of people carrying a coffin decorated with statues and flowers out of a church.
Pope Francis died of a stroke one day prior, causing a coma and "irreversible" heart failure, according to his death certificate released by the Vatican. He previously spent five weeks in the hospital, where he nearly succumbed to double pneumonia (archived link).
The coffin of the 88-year-old was transferred to Saint Peter's Basilica for three days of lying-in-state before his funeral on April 26. Thousands of worshippers are expected to queue up to bid him farewell.
Similar false videos claiming to show his funeral also surfaced on Facebook but the clip is from Guatemala.
A keyword search on TikTok found a user named "cucurucho en guatemala" posted the video on April 19 before Francis's death was announced (archived link).
Further searches found footage showing the same event uploaded on a YouTube channel called "Holy Week Online", which regularly posts content about religious events in the Central American nation (archived link).
The video's title says it shows a procession to mark Good Friday, a Christian holy day commemorating the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ.
Moreover, at the circulating video's 11-second mark, the name of the church is visible and reads, "Parroquia R. De Los Remedios".
Using this detail, AFP was able to confirm the location of the church in Guatemala by comparing it to corresponding street imagery on Google Maps (archived link).
AFP has debunked misinformation related to the death of Pope Francis.
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