This Facebook post with a video purportedly of the undecomposed body of Pope John Paul II exhumed in 2017–12 years after his death — is FALSE.

The post claims that “Pope John Paul’s body was yesterday exhumed, after 12 years. His body appears intact with no signs of decay. ()”

Pope John Paul II was head of the Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005. The pontiff was canonised on 27 April 2014. The Pope’s coffin was exhumed ahead of his beatification, but the images — publicly available — only show the exterior of the casket and not the state of the body.

A separation of the keyframes on InVid WeVerify, a video verification tool, followed by a reverse image search on Microsoft Bing, established that the video we are investigating has been online since 2011.

The video was uploaded on YouTube on 23 August 2011 with a Spanish title translated to; “Relics of Pope John Paul II” and the description: “Visit of the Relics of Blessed John Paul II to the MERCEDES SCHOOL”.

The relics of John Paul II arrived at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico, in August 2011 for a four-month public display across the country.

AP Archive uploaded the footage of the exhibition on 3 August 2015 with the title, “Exhibition of Pope John Paul II’s personal belongings in Guadalupe church.”

The video’s description states: “Worshippers applauded, cried and prayed as they walked past a glass case containing a wax figure of Pope John Paul II wearing a papal robe. The relics on display include a piece of skin belonging to John Paul II inside a reliquary, the papal robe he used during his first visit to Mexico and a collection of commemorative coins.”

PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post with a video purportedly of the undecomposed body of Pope John Paul II exhumed 12 years after his death and finds it to be FALSE.

This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.

By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.

Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.

This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Peris Gachahi and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Cédrick Irakoze and acting chief copy editor Francis Mwaniki.

The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Doreen Wainainah.

PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.

PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.