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A piece of text offering valuable life lessons is frequently shared on social media under the title A Gentle Reminder from Pope Francis: This viral message is almost always accompanied by the claim that it was penned by the Pope, but we found no evidence that the Holy See actually wrote these words. This message does not appear on the Pope's social media pages, nor on any of the official web sites of the Vatican. One of the most popular iterations of this message appeared on the Facebook page of De La Salle College Malta in August 2017—it was shared more than 150,000 times. Several other outlets also shared this message around this time as if it were a genuine message from the Pope. Although this message was frequently attributed to Pope Francis in August 2017, we found several earlier versions of this message that were not attributed to any author. Facebook user Jacob Casstevens, for instance, shared an unattributed version of this message as early as Christmas Day 2016. This is a typical problem with viral quotes on the internet. A meaningful message may not get traction when it is attributed to an unknown author. When a famous name is attached to it, however, it gets a boost in popularity. This appears to be the case with the Gentle Reminder from Pope Francis message. So who actually wrote these words? Although we can't say for certain, the earliest posting that we could find was posted to the Tumblr page of singer Marcela Tais in April 2016. That message was written in Portuguese and is a near verbatim version of the viral Facebook post: The Gentle Reminder from Pope Francis message was not actually written by Pope Francis. This message was circulating for months before the Pope's name was subsequently attached to it.
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