WHAT WAS CLAIMED
A photo shows Pope Francis kissing the hands of David Rockefeller and John Rothschild.
OUR VERDICT
False. The photo shows the pope kissing the hand of a Holocaust survivor.
AAP FACTCHECK - A false claim about Pope Francis kissing the hands of US banker David Rockefeller and a member of the wealthy Rothschild family has re-emerged on social media following the pontiff's death.
The image being shared online actually shows the late Pope Francis meeting a Jewish Holocaust survivor at a memorial in Jerusalem in 2014.
The previously debunked claim has resurfaced in Facebook posts featuring the photo after Pope Francis died in Rome on April 21, 2025.
The image shows the pope kissing the hand of a man wearing a Jewish skullcap, also known as a kippah or yarmulke, and surrounded by six other men and a woman.
"Pope Francis kissing the hands of David Rockefeller & John Rothschild," says overlay text on the photo.
A Google reverse image search reveals that the photo actually depicts the pontiff meeting Holocaust survivors at Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Memorial Center - in Jerusalem on May 26, 2014.
Captions of photos published by EPA Images and Getty Images identify the man being kissed on the hand by Pope Francis as Holocaust survivor Eliezer Grynfeld.
Yad Vashem's online photo gallery (images 7-12/15) of the event identifies the other Holocaust survivors who met the Pope as Avraham Harshalom, Chava Shik, Joseph Gottdenker, Moshe Ha-Elion and Sonia Tunik-Geron.
The names 'David Rockefeller' or 'John Rothschild' do not appear.
David Rockefeller was an American banker and philanthropist who died in 2017.
The Rothschilds are a prominent banking family; however, there is no 'John Rothschild' mentioned in the family's online archive.
The claim has been previously debunked by Reuters Fact Check and AFP Fact Check.
AAP FactCheck has previously debunked claims about Pope Francis, the Rothschild family and the Rockefeller family.
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