What is in Kelvin's Head?

Fake Pope Quote Posts

13/05/2025

One of the more bizarre developments in social media has been the rise in fake quotes from popes appearing online.

One might think that Roman Catholics would be particularly at the forefront of this kind of activity, but that’s not necessarily the case. Anglicans seem to love a good fake pope quote. I’ve seen them posted by an incredible number of people including several senior clerics.

I am bewildered as to why people post things and in doing so say something like “Isn’t it amazing that we’ve got a pope who said…?” and don’t pause for a moment to ask whether it might be the case that someone has just made it up. Incredulity might well be a pathway to common sense.

The sad thing is that there’s plenty of profound things that popes do say that are worth repeating. It seems a terrible shame that Pope Francis might be remembered not for his genius in addressing the Climate Crisis in Laudato Si’ but for a series of invented platitudes about hospital walls.

Particularly puzzling are those, and again, I have senior clerics in my mind, who post these things and then when told that they are not by the pope in question respond by saying that they are going to leave the post up on social media because it sounds like something the pope might have said or that they agree with the sentiments anyway.

I can’t think of a clearer example of bearing false witness than leaving something published that you have claimed to be written by someone when you know that in fact it was not.

But anyway, I have a more entertaining response to this from today than just outraged spluttering on other people’s facebook posts, which is to suggest to anyone desperate for a fake pope quote to post online that they ask ChatGPT to come up with a new one rather than recycling someone else’s.

Here’s how it goes. You open up ChatGPT and you give it this kind of prompt:

write a fake quote from Pope Leo XIV that is about 450 words long. Make it sound vaguely plausible but the message is the everyone is welcome in the church, even those who think they are not. Use the kind of language of the self-help and empowerment movement to suggest that the pope wants to change the church and that he alone has a vision to do this.

And bless it, ChatGPT churns it out beautifully.

There are many who believe the Church is not for them. They whisper to themselves, ‘Surely not me—not with my past, not with my doubts, not with my wounds.’ But I say to you today: the doors of the Church are not narrow—they are wide. They are not guarded by perfection—they are held open by grace.

We must move beyond the old habit of exclusion cloaked in the language of tradition. We must stop drawing lines where Christ drew none. The Church is not a sanctuary for the flawless; it is a refuge for the broken, the confused, the seekers, the scarred. If you feel lost, unsure, uncertain of your worth—you are precisely who Christ called. You belong here.

This is not a time for silence or shadows. It is a time for awakening. Too long have we accepted a Church that feels distant, judgmental, fearful of difference. But the Gospel was never about fear. It was always about radical welcome. About the love that does not check credentials at the door.

I envision a Church reborn—not in doctrine, but in posture. A Church that speaks less about rules and more about renewal. A Church where questions are not threats but invitations. A Church where you do not have to hide who you are to be loved as you are.

This vision is not shared by all. Some will say it is too soft, too open, too modern. But I say it is simply faithful—to the Jesus who touched the unclean, who ate with sinners, who forgave before they asked, and who never once said, ‘Come to me, but only if you’ve already cleaned yourself up.’

I do not seek to dismantle the Church—I seek to return it to its heart. That heart is mercy. That heart is hospitality. That heart is Christ.

If you are gay, divorced, disillusioned, poor, angry, unsure if you even believe anymore—come. If you have been hurt by the Church, forgotten by the Church, judged by the Church—come. If you are full of joy or full of rage—come.

You will not find a perfect community. But you will find a people trying—trying to be more like Christ, one small, stumbling step at a time. That is all any of us can do.

The future of the Church is not behind us in stone and ritual. It is ahead of us—in compassion, in courage, and in the willingness to welcome those who thought there was no place left for them. I have seen this future. And I believe it begins now.”

Isn’t that genius? “Not a time for silence or shadows” – completely meaningless and yet exactly the kind of thing that people love posting. I just love “The future of the Church is not behind us in stone and ritual…”. No pope would ever say that. Priests do tend to like a bit of ritual after all and if any pope got near saying that then I’m sure that they could count on those that surround them to prevent them making a fool of themselves and alienating all their clergy.

“I envision a Church reborn—not in doctrine, but in posture.” Can you imagine anyone other than perhaps a C of E bishop commenting on the latest draft of Prayers of Love and Faith ever saying anything so absurd? Yet I’ve seen plenty of even sillier fake pope quotes purporting to be the real deal.

People do love this kind of thing. And that’s exactly the kind of post that I’ve seen posted and liked and reposted dozens of times in the last few weeks.

Might I suggest that we put a stop to it? For as the medieval pope Kelvinius the First said in 1524…

Let not thine idle hands inscribe falsehoods in the name of the Holy See, for to speak a lie in the voice of Peter is to forge chains for thine own soul. Be on guard for the truth. For the truth shall set you ChatGPTFree.

AI, ChatGPT, fake, false witness, hospital walls, Pope, popes, quote

40 responses to “Fact checking Sandi Toksvig”

Elizabeth Lloyd

05/08/2022

If this is what Archbishop Justin needed to say to preserve the Anglican Communion, is it worth preserving? It seems that it will be a very long time until there is unity on this, and all that time we are damaging and hurting our LGBTQI + siblings (some of them living in the global south), and our faithfulness to the loving and inclusive gospel we are called to share.

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David Coleman

05/08/2022

Thanks for using the visibility of the blog to clarify outcomes and more.

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Tom Bell

05/08/2022

The exact facts of Sandis arguments maybe up for debate but the sentiment is surely not. Any other business organisation that said, hopefully these words will move us towards inclusivity as if it some long distant unachievable goal would be taken to court and ripped apart for its blatant failures and unethical practices. The Anglican church apparently gets a pass on this because its a religion, what me and most of the rest of the secular world don’t understand is why this ever was and should continue to be the case. And the more you defend it the less relevant Christianty will become in a modern society.

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1. Kelvin
  
  05/08/2022
  
  Thanks for your comments, Tom. There isn’t anything that is “The Anglican Church” though, just a collection of churches around the world, held together more by bonds of affection than anything else. There is no rule book. There is no Anglican pope who can just decide things.
  
  I know that seems like a cop out, but it is the legal reality. There’s no The Anglican Church that can make decisions, no The Anglican Church that anyone can sue if it doesn’t like something and no The Anglican Church that can make homophobia disappear in every place around the world.
  
  The Scottish Episcopal Church, which I’m a member of is as inclusive as we can make it right now. I’m happy to perform the marriages of same-sex couples and they are generally fabulous. (Straight couples can marry too and also have fabulous weddings – we really are inclusive).
  
  We worked hard on making it so. It took a long time. I’m glad we put the effort in and did it.
  
  But I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want me to advocate for the same processes to happen in other parts of the Anglican Communion – ie in the other Anglican Churches around the world. I’m certainly not claiming they should get a pass. Far from it – I tend to be known for shouting for inclusion quite loudly.
  
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Alex Staton

05/08/2022

Hi Kelvin, I’ve seen a few folk giving the AB of C a bad press in light of Sandi Toksvig’s letter and have shared your blog in response. Like much of what you write, it’s well thought out and balanced. Sadly well thought out and balanced is in short supply these days and you end up upsetting everybody. From what I’ve seen of the AB of S, he strikes me as a good and honourable man doing with almost impossible task. One might be inclined to believe it justifies his fairly large salary. Either way, it’s too easy to kick the wrong people.

I had the great misfortune lately of encountering Lisa Nolland via an article she wrote for Christian Today. The gist seems to be that the gays are hell bent on subverting all that is godly and are riddled with disease. The rhetoric is frighteningly familiar. She dismissed reports higher suicide risk among young LGBT people as “a pretext”. Chilling. She seems to have some following although others I’ve spoken to accept she’s an extremist that latches onto some instance of supposed bad behaviour and tars everyone with the same brush. I can live with the fact that Christians may be opposed to SSM, say, but I really struggle with those that insist “gay Christian” is an oxymoron. For all their claims of orthodoxy, they’re actually denying the very core of the gospel, that we are saved by grace. What the thing has done is revealed how toxic the discussion in parts of the C of E has become. Frankly, you’d be hard pressed to find such extreme language in my own Free Church of Scotland; excepting David Robertson, of course, who is far from universally respected.

Graeme and I are now members in the C of S. The denomination’s recent decision to allow C of S ministers to perform SSMs is pretty earth shattering. It had been expected over the last couple of years but ten years ago it was all but inconceivable. It’s as if once the thing had gathered momentum, the outcome was inevitable. Of course many will be hoping the tiny steps taken at the synod could be the start of something. But only a fool would expect Anglicans in Uganda or Nigeria to embrace the more inclusive approach. Of course that’s Welby’s difficulty. He isn’t just primate of all England but the figure head for millions of Anglicans world wide. Insofar as it depends on him, he needs to preserve the unity of the church, even when disagreements are profound.

Here in Scotland, we have the national church, the SEC, Methodists, URC, Quakers, Unitarians and others performing or ready to perform SSM. Who would have thought it just a short while ago. That has to challenge the sometimes quite lazy assumption that Christians are against LGBT+ people. Some are, perhaps many are, but many are not. Is it too much to hope that after being excluded for such a long time, LGBT people will be drawn to church? But even then, we need to encourage unity. What we really want is a church where progressives, evangelicals, conservatives are all welcome. I suspect Justin Welby thinks that too. Perhaps AB of C is a poison chalice but as Christians surely we want to support him as best we can.

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Bernd

05/08/2022

always lovely to have someone – Sandy, Christian extraordinary – who hasn’t made the slightest contribution to “Church: now feels compelled to tell it off. Sigh

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Christopher Shell

06/08/2022

She has already decided which particular direction of travel counts as ‘moving on’. That is precisely what the discussion was supposed to be about. In arrogance, she thinks she can bypass the discussion without venturing an argument rather than an assertion, and in the meantime label all who disagree with her as regressive (rather than not subject to the vagaries of fashion, and having more robust principles undergirding their decisions).

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the Rev. Brynn Craffey

06/08/2022

I think the crux of the dispute here is this: is an “accurate description of reality” from the purported head of one of the largest Christian denominations in the world what is called for at this historic moment in time? Or, is taking a moral stand to protect the most vulnerable–namely, LGBTQ2S+ people in both the global north and south–what is called for? I think it’s clear which one Jesus would choose, and it’s not the one the archbishop did.

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The Rt Revd Dr Keith Riglin

07/08/2022

I’m here at Lambeth as a diocesan bishop in the Scottish Episcopal Church – what Kelvin has written is the case (what was actually said and done). Which is why the queer married bishops from the Episcopal Church in the USA were the first to stand and applaud +Justin. We are a Communion of churches not an international Church; there’s much more to do, but this week has been a significant step towards full inclusion of those of us who are LGBT.

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