Video authentically shows Pope Leo XIV saying of U.S. Vice President JD Vance, “You flip flop faster than pages in the Bible.”
In May 2025, a video spread on social media that appeared to show Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Prevost, criticizing U.S. Vice President JD Vance, saying, “You flip-flop faster than pages in the Bible.”
One Threads post (archived) with the video reached over 14,600 reactions, 1,700 reposts, and 5,600 shares.
In the clip, the pope appeared to deliver a monologue accusing Vance of using religion for political gain and contradicting Christian values. Below is the full transcript of the video:
Vance, you flip-flop faster than pages in the Bible. You talk a big game about Christian values, but you support closing the border, deporting refugees, separating immigrant families, even building detention camps. You treat faith like a political tool. One day you use it to oppose same-sex marriage, the next you use it to justify expansionism. On Sunday you’re on your knees in church, on Monday you’re backing Trump’s America First agenda. In the name of traditional family you support cutting aid for the poor, in the name of border security you support violent enforcement against the asylum-seeker. That’s not defending values, that’s wrapping cruelty in scripture. You say it’s about protecting the country. But I remember Jesus talked about welcoming the stranger, receiving the foreigner. So who exactly do you believe in? The Jesus of Galilee or the talk radio Jesus back in Ohio? Because it sure isn’t the one you claim to follow. At the end of the day you’re not defending the faith, you’re decorating your campaign with it. You’ve turned religion into a factory for manufacturing votes. Vance, if you’re willing to repent, the church doors are still open.
The video spread across multiple social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
However, the video was not authentic, and the pope never made the remarks attributed to him. Google searches using combinations of terms such as “Pope Leo XIV,” “JD Vance” and key phrases from the quote yielded no relevant results from credible sources. The quote also did not appear on the Vatican’s official press websites or in any public remarks attributed to the pope by reputable news organizations.
The clip circulating the alleged remarks was a deepfake — digitally fabricated content created using artificial intelligence (AI) to manipulate or entirely generate audio and video that appears to be real. It was based on real footage from a 2023 interview conducted before Leo XIV became pope, altered to include fabricated remarks.
Therefore, we have rated the video as fake.
Snopes contacted the Holy See Press Office for comment and will update this article if we receive a response.
How the deepfake was created
A watermark on the video, along with descriptions in social media posts reposting it, indicated that the original creator was TikTok user @frv13172kk1. We have reached out to the user for confirmation.
As of this writing, however, the video no longer appeared on the account, suggesting it was likely removed or taken down. The account has posted numerous similar videos, many of which were labeled as AI-generated.
(TikTok user @frv13172kk1)
The deepfake likely originated from a Catholic News Service YouTube video titled, “Pope Leo on inclusion in the church,” posted in early May 2025.
“In 2012, the future Pope Leo XIV spoke out against the mass media’s promotion of ‘abortion, euthanasia, and the homosexual lifestyle’. In 2023, after being named Cardinal by Pope Francis, CNS asked if his views had changed,” the narrator in the video introduced the clip, which is transcribed below:
CNS Journalist: Your Eminence, if I could ask just one question. The last time we saw you was in 2012 at the Synode on the new evangelization. Your intervention there talked about the various cultural dimensions that menace the church, different interpretations of marriage etc. Have you, given Francis’s leadership, experienced any change from 2012 until now?
Pope Leo XIV (born Robert Prevost): Given many things that have changed I would say there’s been a development in the sense of the need for the church to open and to be welcoming. And on that level, I think Pope Francis made it very clear that he doesn’t want people to be excluded simply on the basis of choices that they make, whether it be lifestyle, work, way to dress, or whatever. Doctrine hasn’t changed and people haven’t said yet, you know, we’re looking for that kind of change. But we are looking to be more welcoming and more open and to say all people are welcome in the church.
In September 2023, CNS shared a similar video, seemingly from the same interview, informing it showed “Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, prefect for the Dicastery of Bishops” and his response “to problems with bishops or dioceses.”
Prevost made no reference to JD Vance or U.S. politics at any point in the clips.
Some TikTok posts reposting the video labeled it as “AI-generated.” Additionally, the video also had telltale signs of being AI-generated, such as the pope’s face overlapping and blending unnaturally into the microphone area, as shown in the image below:
(TikTok user @frv13172kk1/Snopes Illustration)
The Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector analyzed the audio featured in the clip and gave it an authenticity score of 1 out of 100, indicating the voice was “likely a deepfake.”
(Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector)
This isn’t the first time we’ve fact-checked a quote attributed to the newly elected pope.
For instance, we debunked a fake Pope Leo XIV quote that read, “You cannot follow both Christ and the cruelty of kings. A leader who mocks the weak, exalts himself, and preys on the innocent is not sent by God. He is sent to test you. And many are failing.” We also addressed another fabricated quote claiming he once urged people to “be woke.” Additionally, we investigated claims that Pope Leo XIV said “gender ideology” creates “genders that don’t exist.”