VATICAN CORNER
Before the U.S. presidential election, a fake news website – WTOE 5 NEWS falsely reported that Pope Francis had endorsed Republican candidate Donald Trump. That website is a fantasy news site where most of its articles are satire or pure fabrication. The story was quickly debunked by Craig Silverman of BuzzFeed.com, but once a fraudulent story gets on people’s Facebook pages or on Twitter, it becomes selfreinforcing, shared over and over with family and friends. It is estimated that the false story reached more than 1.2 million people. It is unknown if the story had any influence on the election but social media has indicated that they will not try to protect users from such hoaxes, because their main objective is getting more people to use their service. False stories can generate more user traffic and therefore more income. So the lesson from this story is to question the source, look for confirmation from other reputable sources, and try using websites like: Snopes.com, FakeNewsWatch.com, Factcheck.org, & BuzzFeed.com to search for the truth.
During a news conference before the presidential election, reporters asked Pope Francis to share some wisdom that American Catholics should keep in mind before voting. He said he would never interfere in an electoral campaign, saying “the people are sovereign, I would only say, study the proposals well, pray and choose with your conscience.” On November 5, 2016, 3 days before the election, Pope Francis agreed to a brief interview with his regular atheist interviewer, Eugenio Scalfari, the 92-year-old founder of La Repubblica the Italian left-leaning weekly style magazine. Pope Francis was asked about America’s Donald Trump and he said “I do not give judgements on people or politicians; I simply want to understand what are the sufferings that their approach causes to the poor and the excluded.” He said his main concern right now is refugees and migrants. “A small portion of them are Christians, but this doesn’t change the situation regarding their suffering and distress. The causes are plenty and we do what we can to end them.” He said many times the measures are opposed by people who’re afraid of losing their jobs or having their salaries reduced: “Money is against the poor besides being against immigrants and refugees. But there are also poor people in rich countries who fear welcoming those like them who come from poor countries.” “This is a vicious cycle and it must be interrupted, we must bring down the walls that divide.” Pope Francis went on to urge policies that increase welfare, “building bridges” that aim to decrease inequalities and increase rights and freedoms. Journalist Scalfari ended the interview with urging Francis to rest every now and then. The Pope said “ you too should rest, because a non-believer like you should be as far from ‘bodily death’ as possible.”
Sources: cruxnow.com, ibtimes.com, snopes.com, dailydot.com