This video shows the pope asking for peace in South Sudan, not for forgiveness

In the video, the pope approaches three African men wearing suits. The pontiff kneels in front of them and kisses their feet. He then does the same to a woman wearing a colourful dress.

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Screenshot of misleading Facebook post, taken April 20, 2020

“Good evening everybody. This our father in Italy he bent down to apologise to weebecause he know in Italy the treating black very by so that's what he go to apologise to our father in Africa (sic),” reads the comment on the Facebook post, shared at least 400 times.

The same video was shared here in French and here in southern African language Sesotho.

Comments suggest Facebook users took the claims seriously.

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Screenshot of comments below misleading Facebook post, taken April 20, 2020

Using the verification tool WeVerify, AFP traced the video to various pages on Google, the majority dating back to April 2019. 

This unusual, yet highly symbolic gesture from Pope Francis was widely reported, including by AFP in this article. 

Call for peace

On April 10 and 11, 2019, Pope Francis organised a “spiritual retreat” at the Vatican for Salva Kiir, President of South Sudan along with his political rival, Riek Machar, head of the rebel faction, in a bid to bring peace to the new country founded in 2011.

With hopes of ending the five-year civil war in South Sudan, Kirr and Machar jointly signed a peace treaty in Addis Ababa a few months later in September. The civil war has killed 380,000 people and scattered four million refugees around the globe.

As described in this AFP report, the pope expressed his “heartfelt hope that hostilities will finally cease, that the armistice will be respected, that political and ethnic divisions will be surmounted and that there will be a lasting peace for the common good of all those citizens who dream of beginning to build the nation.”

“I am asking you as a brother to stay in peace. I am asking you with my heart, let us go forward. There will be many problems but they will not overcome us. Resolve your problems,” said the pope before kneeling in front of the South Sudanese leaders. 

In the video below shot by AFP, Pope Francis also kneeled in front of Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior, who was wearing a colourful dress. De Mabior was one of three South Sudanese vice-presidents invited to the Vatican.

Although the Vatican has already asked Africans for forgiveness for the role played by Catholics during slavery as well as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, this gesture had nothing to do with the mistreatment of Africans.