The image shows Pope Francis with Holocaust survivors

This article is more than one year old.
Published on May 21, 2021 at 07:30
2 min read
By Natalia SANGUINO, AFP Spain
Translation and adaptation AFP Australia

Facebook posts circulating in various languages purport to show a photo of Pope Francis kissing the hands of American banker David Rockefeller and a member of the wealthy Rothschild family. The claim is false: the photograph shows the pontiff meeting Holocaust survivors in Israel in 2014.

The photo was shared in a Facebook post published here on April 18, 2021.

Text on the image reads: “Pope Francis kissing the hands of David Rockefeller & John Rothschild”.

The image was also shared here, here, and here.

A similar claim appeared on Facebook in Spanish and French, purporting to show former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger alongside the pope, with Rothschild and Rockefeller.

However, the claim is false.

A Google reverse search of the photo led AFP to this article published on May 26, 2014 in Italian newspaper La Stampa.

The article is about Pope Francis’s encounter with Holocaust survivors during a trip to Israel, where he was visiting the Vad Yashem memorial.

Footage of the encounter was uploaded to the centre’s YouTube channel and that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. No mention of Kissinger, Rockefeller or Rothschild appeared in the memorial’s media release, nor in the aforementioned videos of the encounter.

According to the memorial, the pope shook hands with Eliezer Grynfeld (whom the pope kissed in the post) and Moshe Ha-Elion (behind Grynfeld).

In the following AFP images, Grynfeld and Ha-Elion appear with the pontiff.

Pope Francis (C-L) shakes the hand of holocaust survivor Eliezer Grynfeld (C-R) during his visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum in Jerusalem commemorating the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II. (GALI TIBBON / AFP)

Pope Francis (C-L) shakes the hand of holocaust survivor Moshe Ha-Elion (C-R) during his visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum in Jerusalem commemorating the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II. (GALI TIBBON/AFP)

Below are pictures of the three men mentioned in the misleading posts, Rothschild (left), Kissinger (top-right) and Rockefeller.

British banker Jacob Rothschild, in London in 2016 (left); former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in Berlin in 2020 (right, top); and the US businessman David Rockefeller, in Paris in 2006 (Leon Neal, John MacDougall, Stephane de Sakutin / Archives / AFP)

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

E-mail