Why the Vatican gave unprecedented health updates on Pope Francis
The Vatican issued twice-daily medical briefings during Pope Francis' lengthy hospitalisation as a deliberate strategy to 'counter disinformation' about his condition, The Independent has been told.
As Pope Francis battled pneumonia in the final weeks of his life, his doctor held twice-daily press conferences —an unusually transparent move for such a high-profile figure.
The Vatican's goal: to 'spread official news' and 'counter disinformation' surrounding his health.
'We confirm that the intent of the conferences is to spread official news. Especially on the occasion of the illness, when the Pope was hospitalised at the Gemelli, official information was obviously also necessary to counter disinformation' The Holy See told The Independent.
Conspiracy theories about the health of high-profile figures are on the rise, most recently after the Princess of Wales ' cancer diagnosis and false claims about President Lula's hospitalisation in Brazil last year.
'This is a classic sort of case of prebunking' Benjamin Shultz, a researcher at The American Sunlight Project told The Independent.
'It's to get ahead of the curve and work in front of the rumours instead of catching up to them' he added.
Prebunking is a preventative strategy designed to proactively counter false narratives before they spread. It involves equipping people with accurate information about potential misinformation, enabling them to better recognise and resist falsehoods.
'It disarms conspiracy theories before they emerge by closing the information gap. There is no room for speculation' Ben added.
And it seems to have worked—little to no misinformation circulated about the Pope's condition, according to Ben Shultz.
'I think, you know, to an extent it worked. There was nothing really crossing my desk that I saw that was conspiratorial or misinformed about his health.' he said.
'I can't think of another example where twice a day, you know, one leader's press team has done a press conference. But I think it's a good blueprint' he added.
In 2017 t he Vatican was forced to deny that former Pope Benedict XVI was close to death after rumours about his health were circulated on social media.
The reports claimed the former pontiff's personal secretary, Georg Ganswein, had described the former leader of the Catholic Church as "like a candle that fades slowly".
The quotation that had been circulated was actually taken from a 2016 interview with Mr Ganstein, published in Italian magazine BenEssere.
Pope Francis, who had previously been the target of AI-generated disinformation, had long warned about the dangers of false narratives and synthetic images and videos—particularly their potential to worsen what he called a growing 'crisis of truth.'
In January, the Pope wrote a message addressed to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, calling on political, economic, and business leaders to exercise vigilant oversight over the development and deployment of AI technologies.
"AI can now generate results that are nearly indistinguishable from human work," Francis cautioned, "raising serious questions about its influence on public discourse and the erosion of truth."
The Vatican's shift in communication strategy raises a pressing question: in an age of rampant online falsehoods and an ever-changing social media landscape, could radical transparency be our strongest defence—demonstrating that more communication might, in fact, mean less misinformation?
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