Pope did NOT say animals are going to heaven

We linked to the story that the Pope, in comforting a child, said that his dog would go to Heaven.  But he never said that, there was no child, and the attribution was actually to a misunderstanding of something said by Pope Paul VI!  The story, put out by the New York Times, no less, was fake all the way through and a textbook case in incompetent journalism!

From David Gibson, Sorry, Fido. Pope Francis did NOT say our pets are going to heaven – Religion News Service:

When Pope Francis recently sought to comfort a distraught boy whose dog had died, the pontiff took the sort of pastoral approach he is famous for — telling the youngster not to worry, that he would one day see his pet in heaven.

“Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures,” Francis said reassuringly.

Pope Francis greets a crowd on his way to a meeting with cardinals at the Vatican on Feb. 21, 2014. RNS photo by David Gibson

It was a sparkling moment on a rainy November day, and the setting in St. Peter’s Square only burnished Francis’ reputation as a kindly “people’s pope.” The story naturally lit up social media, became instant promotional material for vegetarians and animal rights groups, and on Friday (Dec. 12) even made it to the front page of The New York Times.

There’s only one problem: None of it ever happened.

Yes, a version of that quotation was uttered by a pope, but it was said decades ago by Paul VI, who died in 1978. There is no evidence that Francis repeated the words during his public audience on Nov. 26, as has been widely reported, nor was there a boy mourning his dead dog.

“There is a fundamental rule in journalism. That is double-checking, and in this case it was not done,” the Vatican’s deputy spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, told Reuters on Saturday.

The Vatican reaction came a day after Religion News Service debunked the story.

So how could such a fable so quickly become taken as fact?

Part of the answer may be the topic of the pope’s talk to the crowd that day, which centered on the End Times and the transformation of all creation into a “new heaven” and a “new earth.” Citing St. Paul in the New Testament, Francis said that is not “the annihilation of the cosmos and of everything around us, but the bringing of all things into the fullness of being.”

The trail of digital bread crumbs then appears to lead to an Italian news report that extended Francis’ discussion of a renewed creation to the wider question of whether animals too will go to heaven, and what previous popes have said.

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