FACT CHECK: Does This Image Show Pope Francis Kissing The Hands Of David Rockefeller And John Rothschild?
An image shared on Facebook allegedly shows Pope Francis “kissing the hands of David Rockefeller & John Rothschild.”
Facebook/Screenshot
Verdict: False
The picture shows Pope Francis kissing the hand of one of six Holocaust survivors he meet at a 2014 event in Israel. None of those six Holocaust survivors were identified as Rockefeller or Rothschild.
Fact Check:
The image shows Pope Francis kissing the hand of an elderly man wearing a yarmulke as some other men look on. Text overlaying the picture reads, “Pope Francis kissing the hands of David Rockefeller & John Rothschild.”
David Rockefeller, the grandson of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, was a banker and philanthropist, according to The New York Times. He died in 2017. The Rothschild family is a banking family that has long been the target of baseless anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. (RELATED: Does This Picture Show Lynn Forester De Rothschild Posing In Front Of A Satanic Painting?)
Contrary to what the post suggests, the picture does not show the pope kissing the hand of a member of the well-known Rockefeller or Rothschild families. Check Your Fact found very similar photos depicting the same event on the European Pressphoto Agency and Getty Images websites, where the captions state they were taken at a museum in Israel as Pope Francis met Holocaust survivors in 2014.
In May of that year, the pope met a group of Holocaust survivors while visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Jerusalem, Reuters reported. The article makes no mention of the Rockefeller or Rothschild family. Pope Francis kissed the hands of six Holocaust survivors he met at the museum, the outlet reported.
The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and Memorial published photos from the pope’s 2014 visit, and the same people that appear in the Facebook image can be see in those pictures. In the museum’s photo gallery of the event, the captions identify the six Holocaust survivors, none of whom had the last name Rockefeller or Rothschild. Footage from the event can also be found on YouTube.
Iterations of the miscaptioned photo have been shared on the internet for several years. The fact-checking website Snopes debunked a version of the claim in 2017.
