No Evidence Supports Claim of ‘Pope Leo XIV’ or Holy Thursday Rite Restoration

(LibertystarTribune.com) – A viral claim that “Pope Leo XIV” restored a Holy Thursday rite after a 14-year break collapses under basic fact-checking—because there is no Pope Leo XIV to begin with.

Quick Take

No credible record shows a Pope Leo XIV exists as of April 1, 2026; Pope Francis remains the reigning pontiff.
No evidence supports a “14-year suspension” of Holy Thursday foot-washing or a new “restoration” limited to priests.
What is documented is the opposite: Pope Francis publicly expanded the ritual starting in 2013, with Vatican norms later broadened in 2016.
The episode is a reminder that online narratives can manufacture “breaking news” that never happened—fueling confusion inside faith communities.

What the Claim Gets Wrong: No “Pope Leo XIV” and No Verified “Restoration”

As of April 1, 2026, available research provided for this story states there is no evidence a “Pope Leo XIV” has been elected, and that the current pope is still Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio, elected in 2013). The same research also reports no credible confirmation of any 14-year suspension of the Holy Thursday foot-washing rite, nor any recent “restoration” focused specifically on washing priests’ feet.

That matters because the claim is framed like a major Vatican course-correction—tradition restored after years of neglect—when the underlying premise appears to be fictional. When a story starts with an identifiable public figure who apparently does not exist, readers should treat every downstream detail as unverified until it is independently confirmed by reputable documentation and reporting.

What Holy Thursday Foot-Washing Actually Is—and How Long It’s Been Around

The Holy Thursday “Mandatum” foot-washing is rooted in the Gospel of John, where Jesus washes the disciples’ feet as a model of service. The provided research describes the practice as dating back to at least the early centuries of Christianity and later formalized in the Roman Ritual in 1614. In many places before 2013, the ceremony often involved twelve men, commonly interpreted as symbolizing the apostles.

Those historical details are important because they directly contradict the idea of a neat, modern “14-year break” followed by a dramatic restoration. The research indicates the rite persisted while norms and customary practices varied by place and time. In other words, debates have tended to revolve around who may participate and what the symbolism means—not whether the Church suddenly stopped and restarted the practice on a clean timeline.

Pope Francis’ Documented Shift: Expansion, Not a Rollback

The research summary says Pope Francis made a widely noted change in 2013 by performing the Holy Thursday foot-washing in a youth prison and including participants beyond the traditional all-male group. It further states that Vatican norms were broadened by a 2016 decree allowing the rite to include all baptized persons. Those points, as presented in the research, describe a direction of travel toward inclusion rather than a reversion to “priests-only.”

The provided material also states that Francis continued the practice in subsequent years, including 2023–2025, and references a 2025 Holy Thursday event at Rome’s Rebibbia prison with diverse participants. If that timeline is accurate, it undercuts the “restoration after a break” framing from two angles: the rite wasn’t on hiatus, and the recent trend line described is not toward narrowing the participants to priests.

Why These Viral Narratives Spread—and What Readers Can Verify

When a headline promises a return to order—especially on a sensitive tradition—people share it quickly because it confirms what they hope is happening. But the research attached to this story explicitly warns that cross-referencing produced “zero matches” for the alleged event, and that some search results instead surfaced generic pages about research methods unrelated to the Vatican or Holy Thursday. That’s a classic sign of a claim circulating without sourcing.

For readers trying to sort truth from internet noise, the most reliable first check is simple: verify the identity of the person alleged to have acted, then verify the specific act through reputable, directly relevant reporting. Based on the research provided here, neither step supports the “Pope Leo XIV restores Holy Thursday tradition after 14-year break” claim. Until credible, primary reporting emerges, the responsible conclusion is that the headline is unsupported.