Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 03/08/2023; Author: Maida Salkanović
Some web portals claim that Pope Francis supported the euthanasia of certain groups for the sake of “the fight against climate change”, which is allegedly a campaign of the World Economic Forum. The facts show that none of that is true.
On July 30, 2023, the web portal Nulta tacka published an article with the title containing the Pope’s alleged statement on climate change:
Pope: Alcoholics, autistic and disabled people should be euthanized to “fight climate change”
The article claims that the Pope “expressed support for the World Economic Forum’s euthanasia campaign” and said that population reduction would help tackle climate change:
Pope Francis expressed his support for the campaign of the World Economic Forum for the euthanasia of people with autism, alcoholics and people with other minor diseases and disabilities in order to help humanity in the fight against so-called “climate change”.
According to Francis, the reduction of the world population will help solve, as he claims, the existential problem of climate change and return nature to its primary position in the world order.
It is further stated that the Pope allegedly said that paedophiles should not be condemned and that they have a “special place in heaven”:
While Pope Francis has stated that we should not condemn paedophiles because they have a mysterious disease and a special place in heaven, he is not so lenient when it comes to people with autism, alcoholics or other minor illnesses.
In the rest of the article, it is said that Pope Francis does not serve the Catholic Church, but that he is a “globalist bulldog loyal to the New World Order”. Among the many claims presented below, the one that stands out is that the Government in the Netherlands allegedly already euthanizes citizens because they have “mild disabilities, autism or suffer from alcoholism”, in order to “save the planet”.
And the Dutch government, infiltrated in the WEF, started euthanizing citizens, including children under the age of twelve, because they have mild disabilities, autism or suffer from alcoholism. According to the government, euthanasia will help “save the planet”.
The Netherlands is one of the nations in the world that love Davos the most, and the current government has accepted Klaus Schwab’s vision of a depopulated world, by all means necessary.
Doctors in the Netherlands have been ordered to start euthanizing citizens with autism and other minor disabilities, without fear of prosecution – even if the patient does not currently express a wish to die.
The same day, the article was also published on the web portal Srbin info.
Did the Pope talk about euthanasia and climate change?
The article published on Nulta tacka and Srbin info was originally published on July 28, 2023, in English on the “conspiracy” web portal The People’s Voice. The article does not mention the place or the date of the alleged l statement. The fact-checking web portal Lead Stories has already verified the claims about the Pope’s alleged statement in an article published on July 28, 2023. As stated in their analysis, and as shown by the search results, there is no record anywhere of the Pope’s alleged statement supporting euthanasia, nor is there any evidence that it actually exists.
The original article in English also included a video in which a person reads the text from the article while photos and videos of Pope Francis alternate in the background. The video’s cover photo shows an alleged tweet from the Pope’s official Twitter account, Pontifex, which stated:
Being a Christian means sacrificing your life for 🌎
The tweet does not appear anywhere in the video, it is not mentioned in the article and does not exist on the Pope’s official profile on the social network X (formerly known as Twitter).
In addition to the fact that there is no evidence that the Pope ever made the claims attributed to him, Lead Stories reminds us that the Catholic Church and Pope Francis are known to be great opponents of euthanasia. In the Declaration of the Catholic Church from May 1980, it is stated that “nothing and no one can in any way allow the killing of an innocent human being”.
Additionally, by searching the word “euthanasia” on the official website of the Vatican, one can find numerous addresses of Pope Francis to various groups, such as doctors and other medical professionals, in which he speaks against euthanasia. His public addresses against euthanasia can also be found on Google (1, 2, 3, 4). As Lead Stories states, one of the most recent is from May of this year, when Portugal introduced euthanasia in certain cases, after which the Pope said that he was “sad because, in the country where Mary appeared, a law on killing was passed”.
Lead Stories also clarifies that the only mention of the Pope on the World Economic Forum (SFF) website is in connection with his two addresses at the WEF annual gathering, in 2014 and 2018. Both speeches are available online and neither mentions euthanasia.
Is there a WEF euthanasia campaign?
The articles actually claim that the Pope “supported the World Economic Forum’s campaign for euthanasia in the fight against so-called climate change”.
However, a keyword search on the World Economic Forum website does not find any mention of the alleged campaign for euthanasia of the mentioned groups of people. Even a Google search for keywords does not bring any results that would show that such a campaign actually exists or that anyone has written about it.
The World Economic Forum has long been the target of many conspiracy theories (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Late last year, similar claims circulated online about the alleged campaign to euthanize pets in the fight against climate change. Reuters, among others, wrote about such claims, which concluded that they were fabricated and incorrect.
Has the Netherlands started a euthanasia program?
As evidence for the alleged campaign of the World Economic Forum, the article claims that the Netherlands “accepted Klaus Schwab’s vision of a depopulated world” and “started to perform euthanasia” and that “doctors in the Netherlands were ordered to start euthanizing citizens with autism and other minor disability even if the patient does not currently express a wish to die”.
In an article published on June 30, 2023, Lead Stories also dealt with these claims, which, independently of the claims about Pope Francis, had been circulating before. And these claims were originally published in English by the web portal The People’s Voice. As it was concluded in this case as well, the claims were incorrect statements. In the Netherlands, according to the official website of the Government, for euthanasia, it is necessary for the patient to express the desire to die, and if this criterion is not met, euthanasia is grounds for criminal prosecution:
Euthanasia and assisted suicide are only legal if the criteria laid down in the Dutch Act on Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide (Revision Procedures) are fully respected. Only then does the doctor in question acquire immunity from prosecution.
The claims about euthanasia in the Netherlands at the time were based on a misinterpretation of a study in which scientists investigated 927 cases of people who requested euthanasia in 2012 and 2021, among which there were 39 people 2with autism or mild intellectual disability”.
Did the Pope declare that “there is a special place in heaven” for paedophiles?
The claim that the Pope stated that paedophiles should not be condemned and that there is a “special place in heaven” for them was also made relevant earlier, in February. In this case, too, the source of the claims was The People’s Voice, which originally published the mentioned claims in English.
Raskrinkavanje dealt with these claims earlier, when it was also concluded that it was fake news. As it was concluded at the time, the Pope actually condemned paedophilia in statements that were incorrectly presented.
As there is no evidence for claims that Pope Francis “supported the World Economic Forum’s campaign for euthanasia” or that he stated that “population reduction will help solve climate change”, we rate such claims, published on Nulta tacka, as fake news.
We also rate the claim suggesting that there is a WEF campaign for euthanasia as a solution to climate change as fake news. Moreover, we give the same rating to the claim that the Netherlands launched a campaign to euthanize patients against their will as part of the fight against climate change.
All other transmissions of the same claims on other web portals are rated as the distribution of fake news.
The claim that the Pope said that “there is a special place in heaven for paedophiles” is rated as the distribution of fake news, given that it has been present in the domestic media for a long time.
Since the false statement of the Pope, as well as the incorrect statements about the Netherlands was placed in the context of a climate conspiracy in which the World Economic Forum is allegedly involved, the claims are also rated as a conspiracy theory.
