Fact Check

Jesus Is Not Coming Back, Vatican Says

Reports that a cardinal announced that the Catholic Church no longer believes that Jesus will return came from a fake news web site.

Published July 27, 2016

 (Wikipedia)
Image Via Wikipedia
Claim:
A cardinal announced that the Catholic Church no longer believes that Jesus will return.

In July 2016, the entertainment web site RealTimeNews.info published an article reporting that Cardinal Giorgio Salvadore had announced that the Vatican no longer believes that Jesus will return to the world:

A SPOKESPERSON for the Vatican (Roman Catholic) has officially announced that the second coming of Jesus, the only son of the God, may not happen now after all, but urged followers to still continue with their faith, regardless of the news. Cardinal Giorgio Salvadore told WWN that this years 1,981st anniversary is to be the Vatican’s last in regards to waiting for the Lord to return to Earth.

While RealTimeNews.info does not carry a readily available disclaimer on its web site, the story quoted above is a carbon copy of an article published in 2014 by Waterford Whispers News, a web site that does label itself a satire publication:

Waterford Whispers News is a fabricated satirical newspaper and comedy website published by Waterford Whispers News.

Waterford Whispers News uses invented names in all its stories, except in cases when public figures are being satirized. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental.

When the story was first published, Reverend Joseph Osei-Bonsu — the President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference — said that the story was a fabrication and that no Cardinal Giorgio Salvadore exists:

“The publication is the fabrication of a mischievous and malicious person. The views stated in it do not come from any Cardinal in the Vatican,” he declared in a statement.

He said none of the 216 Cardinals bore the name Giorgio Salvadore and explained that there was, indeed, a Cardinal Salvatore de Giorgi, an Archbishop Emeritus of Palermo.  

However, Cardinal de Giorgi is not a Vatican spokesperson.

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.