Clip of Pope Leo XIV addressing Burkina Faso leader is fake
What was claimed: A video shows Pope Leo XIV addressing a speech to Burkina Faso's military ruler Captain Ibrahim Traoré.
Our verdict: This clip has been edited and likely includes deepfake audio of the Pope. He hasn't delivered such a speech and the edited clip was first shared with a note saying it was a work of fiction.
A clip supposedly showing Pope Leo XIV addressing a speech to Burkina Faso's military ruler Capt Ibrahim Traoré is being shared on social media. But this is not a real speech and the clip was edited, most likely using artificial intelligence.
The 36-minute video appears to show Pope Leo, who was elected head of the Catholic church on 8 May, reading a speech from sheets of paper. The speech begins: 'We will no longer sit at global summits in silence when African leaders are told to privatise their future. To His Excellency President Ibrahim [Traoré], president of the sovereign nation of Burkina Faso, son of the African soil, defender of his people, may grace and peace be multiplied.' He then continues to speak about colonialism in Africa, the church, and politics on the continent today, among other things.
The video, which is grainy and glitchy, has music playing in the background and was shared by a Facebook page called Ghanaba News. Graphics saying 'Ghanaba News' appear at the start and end of the clip.
It was shared with a caption saying: 'Pope Leo XIV speaks truth as he back [sic] Burkina Faso leader Captain Ibrahim Traore'. Captain Traoré became Burkina Faso's military leader after seizing power in a coup in September 2022.
However, this is not a real speech delivered by the Pope. It was originally shared on YouTube on 17 May 2025 with a note low down in the description saying: 'This video is a work of fiction inspired by the life of Ibrahim Traoré. While some elements are based on real events, the situations and dialogues described are entirely imaginary and do not reflect any actual events'.
While the footage used in the clip is genuine, we could find no evidence that this is real audio of the Pope speaking. It is very likely a deepfake audio clip created with artificial intelligence.
The footage comes from a real recording of him delivering a speech in Italian on 12 May 2025, in which he called for press freedom to be defended, and urged the world to 'reject the paradigm of war'.
The Pope can be seen shuffling his papers and looking up at the audience in the real footage [13:00], which matches his movements in the edited clip [9:58]. The Vatican published an official transcript translated into English, which shows the Pope was not addressing President Traoré, and did not mention Africa.
Several things suggest the audio of Pope Leo speaking is a deepfake.
Associate Professor from the University of Reading and expert in generative AI, Dr Dominic Lees, told Full Fact that the presence of an unlikely music soundtrack over a video like this is 'frequently used to mask the poor qualities of voice cloning'. Voice cloning is when AI uses a sample of someone speaking to identify speech patterns it then replicates.
Dr Lees said: 'No official video of a speech by a Pope has ever been given a music backing, so this one by Pope Leo XIV has certainly been manipulated. Note that there is no room ambience around the voice in this fake video: the voice clone used here has been produced by a text-to-speech AI process, which is unable to create the natural sound of a recording made of a person in a room.'
Another sign that this is a deepfake is that the Pope pronounces Capt Traoré's name differently in successive sentences [2:56]. The clip is also blurry around the mouth. Dr Lees has previously said this is a sign a deepfake has been poorly lip synced with footage because artificial intelligence finds it 'very difficult to generate a natural look in the teeth so often leave this blurry and out-of-focus.'
While it is very likely that this is a deepfake, we can't be certain because there are other methods, such as different editing techniques or using a voice actor, that could have been used instead.
We've contacted Ghanaba News and the Vatican for comment, and will update this article if we receive a response.
As technology advances, deepfakes are becoming increasingly realistic and harder to distinguish from genuine footage. Our guide to spotting deepfake videos and AI audio provides practical tools to help tell whether they're genuine.
This is not the first time we've fact checked content relating to Pope Leo XIV, including an altered image showing him with rappers and a quote widely attributed to him that we could find no evidence he actually said.
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