AFP fact-check: Pope Francis did not bless Duterte’s administration

Screenshot courtesy of AFP

MANILA, Philippines — Pope Francis did not bless President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration, the fact-checking of Agence France-Presse (AFP) revealed Thursday.

The French news agency debunked an article claiming that “Pope Francis blessed governments, especially the Duterte administration, so that they could have more strength to fight ‘traffickers of death’.”

The article even attempted to boost this claim by using a quote from Pope Francis: “All of us are called to combat the production, processing and distribution of drugs worldwide. It is the duty and responsibility of governments courageously to undertake this fight against those who deal in death.”

This quote, AFP said, was from a speech given by the Pope on December 1 during the “Drugs and addiction” conference at the Vatican.

However, the French news agency stressed Pope Francis “did not mention the Duterte administration” in his speech.

The AFP even pointed out an article on the said conference was also posted by the Vatican News, the Holy See’s official information service, but did not mention the Pope blessing the Duterte administration.

Below is a snapshot courtesy of the AFP from CrowdTangle, a social media monitoring platform, which showed the false report accumulated shares by pro-Duterte Facebook groups, which have nearly 300,000 followers:

Screenshot courtesy of AFP

/kga