In Kerala, Bishop Franco Mulakkal was accused of raping a nun. On social media, a few statements purportedly said by him in that regard are doing rounds. Let’s check the authenticity of those statements.
Claim: Kerala nun rape accused, Bishop Franco Mulakkal said- “Whatever happened between me and nun, it is not rape. It is the Holi Ritual of enlightenment to feel the Magical Existence of Holi Jesus at the end of the act”.
Fact: Bishop Franco Mulakkal hasn’t made these statements. The Twitter account of a ‘parody’ (satire) website has tweeted those statements attributing to him. Also, the news channel template carrying such statements with the image of Bishop Mulakkal is digitally created using a website. Hence the claim is FALSE.
An article of ‘India Today’ states that Bishop Franco Mulakkal is accused of raping a nun in Kerala. To check if Bishop Mulakkal has made such statements in that regard, Google search was performed with the text, ‘Whatever happened between me and nun, it is not rape. It is the Holi Ritual of enlightenment to feel the Magical Existence of Holi Jesus at the end of the act’. But no relevant information was obtained in the search results.
When searched with the same text on Facebook and Twitter, it was found that such claims have been doing rounds on social media for the past one year. During the search process, it was found that a Twitter account with the name ‘The Unpaid News’ was the first to attribute those statements to Bishop Mulakkal. The profile of that account had the description- ‘Indian Satirical News Website. Don’t believe in rumours. We bring you best fake news’. So, it is the Twitter account of a ‘parody’ website and the news posted by them are not true.
The tweet had a screenshot with a news channel template carrying such statements as said by Bishop Mulakkal. When observed it carefully, the spelling of ‘Holy’ is seen as ‘Holi’ and also, near the watermark of ‘ANI’, one can find website address ‘breakyourownnews.com’. ‘Break Your Own News’ is a website that offers one to create their own template just by giving headlines and uploading an image. So, ‘The Unpaid News’ might have created such a template using this website.
To sum it up, false statements from a ‘parody’ account are being attributed to Kerala nun rape accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal.
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