Your friends on social media may have reposted inspiring graphics in which Pope Leo XIV (AKA Robert Prevost) said, “To be called woke in a world that sleeps through suffering is no insult.”

It’s bogus. Pope Leo XIV never said any such thing.

An atheist made up the fake quote using an artificial intelligence chatbot in order to see how many people would fall for the hoax. “The fact that so many of you wanted this to be true shows how far Catholicism is from real progress,” he said, revealing the fake.

Pope Leo XIV also never said that “To be woke is not a threat. It is a calling.” That’s another fake quote. Pope Leo XIV has never defended the woke perspective. In fact, he has criticized it.

What about the following statement, though?

"You cannot follow both Christ and the cruelty of kings. A leader who mocks the weak, exalts himself, and preys on the innocent is not sent by God. He is sent to test you. And many are failing."

Nope. It’s another fake quote. Pope Leo XIV didn’t say it.

There’s a longer quote claiming to be from Pope Leo XIV that people have been forwarding around in which the new Pope directly criticizes Donald Trump:

“Trump, the immigration policies you've implemented are a blatant trampling on both the teachings of the church and the promises of the American dream. You've made a big show of declaring a state of emergency at the border, dispatched the military to enforce the law there, canceled birthright citizenship and even had law enforcement officers barge into places like churches and schools which are supposed to be inviolable to arrest illegal immigrants. You're turning the United States into a country that has no room for tolerance, going completely against the diversity that the U.S. has always advocated. In order to win those so-called votes and pander to some extreme voters, you've resorted to all means to create external enemies and have intensified social conflicts. All of your actions are a hideous manifestation of white supremacist ideology. What's more, the incident of you accepting an airplane from the cartel is truly despicable. Such behavior of yours has seriously damaged the image of public officials. You're simply using your power as a tool to seek personal gains. I, Robert Prevost, firmly oppose everything that you stand for. Every single thing you've done is dragging the United States into the abyss of darkness and undermining the very foundation of this country.”

By this point, you know what I’m going to say. Yes, it’s a completely fake quote. This supposed statement by Pope Leo XIV was uploaded in a video that was explicitly labeled as generated by AI tools.

When Pope Leo XIV did not speak up for liberal social values, liberal Christians seized upon fake quotes in order to avoid confronting the brutal reality that the Catholic Church is an anti-liberal organization.

What Pope Leo XIV Actually Has Said

In a previous episode of this podcast, I noted Pope Leo XIV’s verbal attack against atheists, accusing them of causing all of the problems that have in fact been caused by Christian Nationalists. Pope Leo XIV said:

"A lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds that afflict our society."

Now, Pope Leo XIV has issued a new statement criticizing LGBTQ marriages, saying that governments around the world should only support families that are “founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman”. Pope Leo XIV has also criticized what he calls the “homosexual lifestyle”.

Pope Leo XIV has not made a single statement or gesture that criticizes Donald Trump. At the same time, Pope Leo XIV is criticizing the acceptance of non-Christians and LGBTQ people.

People are spreading false quotes from Pope Leo XIV because the real statements the new Pope is making are unpalatable. Pope Leo XIV is not a liberal. Like every other Pope before him, Pope Leo punches down.

Pope Leo XIV is turning a blind eye to the abuses of Christian Nationalism. He won’t be coming to the rescue of an America that is falling into Christofascism.