Video of Pope Leo XIV denouncing Vance is fake

"Vance, you say you hope Biden recovers soon, yet you attack him with such cold, calculated words. It's hard to believe someone like you is part of the US government," Pope Leo XIV appears to say in the clip, which was shared in a May 23, 2025 post on Instagram.

"As an American-born pope, my heart is full of concern and sorrow," the audio continues. "Looking back at some of the policies Mr. Vance has put forward, it seems he's forgotten the most basic principle of human compassion, placing people in difficult and painful situations. This runs completely counter to the teachings we hold dear."

Flashing between shots of the pope speaking and clips of Vance and Biden, the minute-long video goes on to feature what sounds like the pope's voice saying Vance should have offered Biden "sympathy and blessings" and must "let go of hostility and approach others with tolerance."

Image

Screenshot from Instagram taken May 27, 2025

The same video spread across Instagram and TikTok after Biden's office announced May 18 that he had been diagnosed with an "aggressive" form of prostate cancer which had reached his bones.

The posts reference Vance's comments after Biden's diagnosis, which stoked allegations of a cover-up surrounding the Democrat's health. Speaking following a May 19 visit with Pope Leo, Vance wished Biden a recovery while also saying, "We really do need to be honest about whether the former president was capable of doing the job."

Before he was chosen May 8 to lead the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, Pope Leo used a personal X account to opine on a range of hot-button issues. The activity included the amplification of articles criticizing Vance and US President Donald Trump, particularly on the topic of migration.

In one instance, 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.

But the video purporting to show the first-ever American pontiff blasting Vance over his reaction to Biden's cancer is fake.

A TikTok watermark on the video reveals it was first posted to the platform May 20 alongside a label indicating it was AI-generated.

AFP's analysis of the audio using the voice cloning detection tool in the Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify, found it is likely AI-generated.

Siwei Lyu, director of the University at Buffalo's Media Forensic Lab (archived here), said his own analysis of the audio likewise determined that it "has a high likelihood of being AI-generated, and produced using a text-to-speech or voice cloning model."

"The tone is overly smooth and consistently calm, resembling scripted delivery typical of synthetic speech," Lyu told AFP in a May 24 email.

"Also, the voice lacks clear breathing sounds, which is another sign that it may be AI-generated," he added.

Keyword searches for the speech heard in the posts returned no matching quotes in the Vatican's transcripts or in news articles.

The footage of the pope appears to have been pulled from his May 10 remarks to cardinals -- delivered in Italian -- about why he chose Leo as his papal name (archived here). He can be seen wearing the same cassock and standing before the same background as in the deepfake shared online.

AFP contacted the Vatican for comment, but no response was forthcoming.

AFP has debunked other misinformation about the pope here.