Fake New York Times headline circulates after new pope elected
- Published on May 9, 2025 at 23:10
- 3 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"Oooooh. So he's like WOKE woke," says a May 8, 2025 post on Facebook.
The post shows what appears to be an article with a photo of the newly elected pope and a headline that reads: "Pope Leo XIV Was a Founding Member of the 2020 Anarchist Seattle Autonomous Zone Known as CHAZ.” The arrangement and typography resembles that of the New York Times, although the outlet's name is not visible.
Text below the headline adds: “Robert Francis Prevost spent much of his time in the early COVID-19 pandemic writing an anarchist zine describing how to best fist-fight police officers.”
Similar posts spread across Facebook, X and Instagram after cardinals from around the globe chose Chicago-born Prevost, 69, to lead the the world's 1.4 billion Catholics. In some of the screenshots, the headline described the autonomous zone as being located in Portland, Oregon.
Pope Leo XIV, who spent decades doing missionary work in Peru, has used an active X account to opine on a range of hot-button issues, leaving a lengthy digital footprint that led some right-wing voices to quickly brand him as "woke."
In one post, the pope called for a rejection of racism after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man who suffocated while handcuffed under the knee of a white police officer in Minnesota, sparking nationwide protests (archived here).
The pontiff has also amplified articles criticizing US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, particularly on issues of migration. Three months before his selection to lead the Catholic Church, for example, he reposted a headline and a link to an essay saying Vance was "wrong" to quote Catholic doctrine to support the administration's cancellation of foreign aid (archived here).
The purported headline about Pope Leo XIV refers to the six-block "Capitol Hill Organized Protest" zone, or CHOP, that sprang up in Seattle after Floyd's death.
Originally known as the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone," or CHAZ, the area was occupied by protesters for about three weeks before law enforcement cleared it out on July 1, 2020.
But the headline attempting to link the new pope to the Seattle protest effort is fabricated, the New York Times confirmed to AFP.
"The New York Times did not publish this headline," spokesperson Maria Case said in a May 9, 2025 email, adding that readers can follow the outlet's real coverage of the pope on its website.
Among other clues the alleged article is fake, the New York Times does not use all-caps text to write "Covid-19" (archived here).
The fictional headline appears to have originated with Jeremy Kaplowitz, who wrote on X that it came from the Times. Kaplowitz is a comedian.
Keyword searches for the text of the headline returned no genuine articles from the Times or other media.
Shortly after AFP's outreach, the New York Times posted a press release to its website titled: "Tracking Misinformation: Fabricated Headline" (archived here).
"The New York Times did not publish a headline or story titled, 'Pope Leo XIV Was a Founding Member of the 2020 Anarchist Portland Autonomous Zone known as CHAZ,'" the organization wrote.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the papacy here.
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