A viral social media post claims that the picture shared in the post was captured when the statue of ‘Our lady of Fatima’ was brought from Italy to Bangalore. It also claims that, upon arrival, Holy mary’s shadow got cast around the statue. Let’s fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Photo shows a shadow of the Holy Mary getting cast on the statue of ‘Our lady of Fatima,’ which was brought from Italy to Bangalore by flight.
Fact: In 2016, the statue of ‘Our lady Fatima’ was ferried on a plane to the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea. News reports and videos covering this event contain visuals that match the viral photo, and none of these visuals show any shadow cast around the statue. This photo has nothing to do with Bangalore. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Upon performing a keyword search to learn more details about the viral claim, we found two news articles (here and here) from 2016 which contained the visuals of a statue similar to that of the viral post.
Reportedly, the world-famous International Pilgrim Virgin Statue of ‘Our Lady of Fatima’ was ferried on an Aircraft to the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea in October 2016.
Comparing the visuals in the news reports and videos (here and here) uploaded on the YouTube channel of the news website ‘Emtv online’, we found that the plane and the statue look similar to the viral photo.
One of the reports contains a closeup photo of the statue, which looks like the alleged shadow cast around the statue as shown in the viral post. The viral post could have been edited using this photo and another photo taken during the event by reducing the opacity/transparency of the photo to look like a shadow cast around the statue. With this evidence, it can be concluded that the viral photo was taken during this event in 2016, contrary to the claim that it was captured in Bangalore. Also, to know if such event took place in Bangalore recently, we performed a basic keyword search, which led us to a video uploaded on a YouTube channel named ‘Sacred Heart Church, Bangalore’. It contains the visuals of the ‘Arrival of Our Lady of Fatima Statue‘ from Portugal to Bangalore.
To sum up, a photo shot during the arrival of the statue of ‘Our lady of Fatima’ in Buka Island in Papua New Guinea is peddled as Bangalore with the false narrative of a shadow cast around the statue.
