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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Religion & belief fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about religion & belief. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

3,371 published reviews in this topic

Deutsche Presse-AgenturReligion & belief

In der Regel lässt der Papst seine Hand küssen - tut er das umgekehrt bei anderen, ist das eine große Geste der Demut. Im Internet kursiert ein Bild, auf dem Papst Franziskus angeblich «den Rockefellern» die Hand küsst. Das kirchliche Oberhaupt verbeugt sich scheinbar vor den Reichen. Damit sei die Frage geklärt, «wie die Welt funktioniert».

Publisher’s rating: Die Szene zeigt Papst Franziskus bei seinem Israelbesuch 2014 in der Holocaust-Gedenkstätte Yad Vashem. Er hat dort sechs Überlebenden der NS-Zeit die Hand geküsst. Falsch ist, dass es sich auf dem Bild um Mitglieder der vermögenden Rockefeller-Familie handelt.

The claim concerns a photograph circulated online as showing Pope Francis bowing to and kissing the hand of a Rockefeller family member. The review places the scene at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, during the Pope’s visit to Israel on May 26, 2014. It says the hand-kissing was a symbolic gesture toward six Holocaust survivors, rather than a display of deference to the Rockefellers. The review identifies the Rockefeller attribution as false. To check who appears in the image, the review reports comparing it with other photographs of the scene, including images from the European Pressphoto Agency, and consulting information from the Israeli embassy in Rome and Yad Vashem. It says the photograph was taken by Amos Ben Gershom for the Israeli government press office. Yad Vashem identified the person receiving the hand-kiss as Eliezer (Lolek) Grynfeld, born in Łódź in 1923—not David Rockefeller, the US banker who died in 2017. The review also notes that the image had been published by news outlets and the World Jewish Congress. That reporting is consistent with the described setting and gesture: the photograph records a meeting with Holocaust survivors at the memorial, not an encounter with members of the Rockefeller family.