Fact Check: Has Pope Leo XIV Appointed Guinean Vatican-based Cardinal Sarah His “Special Envoy”?

Posted just a day after the inauguration of Pope Leo XIV as the 267th Pontiff, formally beginning his Papal Ministry as head of the 1.4 billion members of the universal Catholic Church, the video on YouTube claims that the Holy Father has established a brand new Holy See “position”. Going by the name, “Special Papal Envoy”, the office neither “honorific” nor “symbolic”; it is “mission critical”, the narrator claims.

The YouTube post claims that Cardinal Sarah, one of the 18 Cardinal Electors from Africa, is the beneficiary of the newly created position, described as “Pope Leo XIV’s shocking decision”.

Robert Cardinal Sarah. Credit: ACI Africa

“Nobody, not even the Cardinals closest to the Curia, expected the Vatican to make such an announcement,” the narrator says, referring to both the creation of the position and the appointment of the Guinean-born Cardinal, who will turn 80 on June 15. According to the narrator, the news of Cardinal Sarah’s appointment was preceded by Pope Leo XIV phone conversation with the Vatican-based Cardinal that lasted 43 minutes, the latter requesting for “time to pray” and eventually accepting the appointment “five days later”.

Cardinal Sarah is described as “the man who quietly but unmistakably disagreed with Pope Francis on everything from liturgical reform to gender ideology”.

Credit: ACI Africa

The YouTube post has this narrative about Cardinal Sarah and the purported Pope Leo XIV’s phone call to him: “Some believed he had no chance of being elected Pope. He was overly controversial, too hardline. However, that may not have been his role to play, because just a few weeks later, under a new Pontificate, the impossible occurred. The telephone rang. It arrived quietly. No entourage. No announcement. It’s just a simple call. The phone rang at Cardinal Robert Sarah’s modest residence on the outskirts of Rome, where he had lived since retirement, a small stone house filled with African iconography, well-worn theological texts, and the silence of a man who had given up expecting much from Vatican phone calls. But that morning, it rang.”

According to the narrator, the new Pontiff, the 69-year-old American-born member of the Order of St. Augustine (OSA) “appears to understand what his predecessors frequently forgot: those who resist change can shape the path forward.”

Credit: ACI Africa

The YouTube publication claims that the news of the new position and its beneficiary was made public “five minutes before noon Rome time” through “the Holy See Press Office ... bulletin that was so brief and understated that many assumed it was an error.” Still, deep into the post, the narrator provides details, specifying the outreach of the purported position and what Cardinal Sarah will undertake. 

It is also claimed that Cardinal Sarah held a press conference, not at the “Vatican more accustomed to subtle maneuvering and cautious messaging” but in Kenya’s capital city, “at the residence of the Archbishop of Nairobi.”

Credit: ACI Africa

It is described as “a brief press conference inside the Archbishop’s residence. No velvet curtains, no gold trimmed thrones, a long table, a few microphones, and Cardinal Robert Sarah, who sat in silence until the cameras stopped clicking.”

ACI Africa fact check findings 

While it is true that the Vatican makes public resignations and appointments through the Holy See Press Office bulletins, the May 19 notifications referenced in the YouTube post make no mention of a newly created position; nor is Cardinal Sarah among Papal appointees. 

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The claim that Cardinal Sarah held a press conference in Nairobi on his purported appointment as Special Papal Envoy is false. On May 15, ACI Africa leadership accompanied visiting officials of EWTN marketing department to the residence of the Local Ordinary of Nairobi Metropolitan See, Archbishop Philip Anyolo Subira, to pay him a courtesy visit. It is inconceivable how an event involving Cardinal Sarah and a press conference would not have featured as a talking point during the courtesy meeting.

 Credit: ACI Africa

ACI Africa has established that February 2024 was the last time Cardinal Sarah was in Nairobi, when he delivered his keynote address at the 2024 Theological Symposium that the School of Theology of Kenya-based Tangaza University (TU) organized.

The claim that Cardinal Sarah “quietly … disagreed with Pope Francis on everything” is questionable. On one hand, Cardinal Sarah was among the five Cardinals behind the dubia to the late Pope Francis, which comprised a set of questions in which the five Catholic Church leaders drawn from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas expressed their concerns ahead of the opening of the 4-29 October 2023 session of the Synod on Synodality, the first of the multi-year initiative that the late Pope Francis extended to 2024. 

Cardinal Sarah alongside German-born Walter Cardinal Brandmüller, U.S.-born Raymond Cardinal Burke, Bishop emeritus of Hong Kong and member of the Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB), Joseph Cardinal Zen Ze-kiun, and Juan Cardinal Sandoval Íñiguez, a native of Mexico, had also issued a “Notification to Christ’s Faithful.”

On the other hand, Cardinal Sarah is on record stating that he, alongside other Cardinals behind the dubia, were not in opposition with the Holy Father, Pope Francis. 

Credit: ACI Africa

In a January 6 reflection that he shared with Settimo Cielo, an Italian blog, Cardinal Sarah maintained his previous stance of not opposing Pope Francis. 

“We do not oppose Pope Francis, but we firmly and radically oppose a heresy that seriously undermines the Church, the Body of Christ,” Cardinal Sarah said, clarifying his opposition to the recommendations of  Fiducia Supplicans (FS), permitting members of the Clergy to bless “same-sex couples” and couples in other “irregular situations”. Released on 18 December 2023, the Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith (DDF) Declaration elicited mixed reactions and deep divisions among the people of God in general and Catholic Bishops around the world in particular.

Additionally, the May 19 YouTube post has some internal inconsistencies, which are manifested in contradictions and conflicting statements.

Credit: ACI Africa

While the narrator claims that Cardinal Sarah criticized Pope Francis “quietly”, he says that the Guinean Cardinal’s “2019 book, The Day Is Now Far Spent, was widely regarded as a veiled criticism of the Vatican’s direction. It sold over 200,000 copies in multiple languages without receiving a single endorsement from a current Vatican official.”

In the first minute of the YouTube post, the narrator claims that the bulletin on the purported office and appointee is “so brief and understated”. Later, into the 10th minute, the narrator explains about the Vatican having “issued the full statement.”

The full statement, the narrator explains, “was not buried in liturgical jargon or ambiguous language. It was bold, clear, and for many in Rome, unprecedented. ‘His Holiness, Pope Leo XIV, appoints His Eminence Robert Cardinal Sarah, as Special Papal Envoy to the global South, tasked with strengthening ties between traditional Catholic communities and the central mission of unity, evangelization and doctrinal fidelity.” 

These details seem to contradict what was stated in the first minute. In another example, the narrator indicates that the bulletin announcing Cardinal Sarah’s purported appointment had “no title; there’s no description. There’s no press conference.” 

Credit: ACI Africa

But in the 16th minute, there is a press conference, not in Rome but in Nairobi, during which Cardinal Sarah is said to have “confirmed his new title, Special Papal Envoy to the global South, and detailed his upcoming itinerary, which includes Burkina Faso, Colombia, the Philippines, South Sudan, and a return to Europe to listen, not to lecture.” 

Verdict: The multiple falsehood and the internal inconsistencies combine to make the May 19 YouTube post on Cardinal Sarah fake; it should not be taken seriously. It is possible that Pope Leo XIV will create new offices and positions. He is yet to take that path. 

Similar to the 36-minute video purporting to show Pope Leo XIV reading a statement in response to Captain Ibrahim Traoré, the 37-year-old leader of Burkina Faso, ACI Africa has rated the 21-minute May 19 YouTube post on Cardinal Sarah and a purported newly created Vatican position as a false claim.