It is no fluke that on the day after the feast of St Benedict, fake tweets from fake accounts ‘announced’ the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
Newsroom (12/07/2022 10:35 AM Gaudium Press) Yesterday at about 2:30 AM Rome time, journalists worldwide were awakened to fake news. A bogus Twitter account using the name of Georg Bätzing, the head of the German Bishops’ Conference, tweeted a false report Monday that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI had died.
The Twitter account belongs to fraudster Tommasso De Benedetti, a man with a very dubious history of similar past hoaxes. A Rome schoolteacher, De Benedetti, 43, defines himself as a “normal person.” But in the Twittersphere, he has recently played the parts of Afghan president Hamid Karzai, a Spanish minister, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
De Benedetti says, “Twitter works well for deaths. Social media is the most unverifiable information source in the world, but the news media believes it because of its need for speed.” De Benedetti denied he was a simple hoaxer fooling paper for money. “I wanted to see how weak the media was in Italy; the Italian press never checks anything, especially if it is close to their political line, which is why the rightwing paper Libero liked Roth’s attacks on Obama.” Half the time, he added, he suspected editors knew he was peddling made-up interviews but took them anyway.
One must question the methodology used by De Benedetti to expose the media. While indeed, he is correct that the media has the duty to check sources before publication, the proper way to expose media laziness would be by fact-checking published articles instead of using shock tactics that create a panic. Case in point, after tweeting that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad had died on Aug. 6, 2012, the price of crude oil skyrocketed. Such a reckless tweet had actual real-life implications on the life of millions of people and, as such, deserve not plaudits but punishment.
This is not the first time, however, that De Benedetti published a fake tweet regarding the death of Pope Benedict XVI. On Mar. 8, 2012, he tweeted from a fake account as the Vatican number two @CardBertone: His holiness Benedict XVI has passed away. We announce the news with great pain and consternation.
But why the latest tweet from Georg Bätzing?
Georg Bätzing is the head of the German Bishops’ Conference. As readers of this website know, there is an ongoing situation with the German Synodal way. The assembly of the synodal path has voted in favour of documents calling for the priestly ordination of women, same-sex blessings, and changes to teaching on homosexual acts. Various bishops from four continents have written to Batzing, stating in no unclear terms that the German Synodal path is moving in a direction away from the Church. “Our Church needs change in order to faithfully carry out her mission and take the precious Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of our time. And the urgent need for change also includes the need to further develop the Church’s teaching. Such is my conviction,” Bishop Bätzing wrote in a May 5 letter to Archbishop Aquila. Thereby doubling down on his position and that of the German Synodal path.
DeBenedetti cannot be unaware of this situation, nor can he be unaware that there is an orchestrated attack against Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. In an important interview with EWTN’s Andreas Thonhauser, Benedict XVI’s personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, shared some details of the Pope Emeritus. Archbishop Ganswein stated that “certain objectives to which the German Synodal Way aspires are something in which the person and work of Benedict stand as an obstacle.”
In his last act as pope, Benedict wrote his encyclical on faith, Lumen Fidei (officially issued by Pope Francis). He did not know who his successor would be, but he did have Cardinal Müller in place. He gave a final warning to the party of rupture (The liberalizers within the Church and in Germany)
“Since faith is one, it must be professed in all its purity and integrity,” Benedict wrote. “Precisely because all the articles of faith are interconnected, to deny one of them, even of those that seem least important, is tantamount to distorting the whole” (48).
Therefore it is no accident that DeBenedetti, to add fuel to the fire, released a fake tweet from a fake account of Batzing about the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI the day after the feast of St Benedict. Such behaviour is not a hoax nor a trick on the media. It indicates a devious maliciousness aimed at creating more divisions in the Church. And as such, this type of action can only be viewed as the handiwork of the fallen ones.
By Raju Hasmukh