On December 23, 2020, information appeared in a number of Russian media that the Pope was ready to reward all Russians who celebrate Catholic Christmas. We checked whether this is actually true.

Here is the full text of the news, which was distributed, in particular, by such network resources as Kolibri.Press, Rybinskonline, "Law and Order", webos.su and a number of others:

“Pope Francis made an appeal to the parishioners of the Russian Orthodox Church with a call to celebrate the holiday of Christmas on a single day in the Catholic style - December 25. In his appeal, he promised everyone who follows his proposal to pay €200, which approximately equals 18,300 rubles.
“My children, our Lord cannot have two birthdays. Errors due to schismaticism not only do not favor the messenger of Jesus Christ, but also summon the devil every time the Christmas tree lights up with garlands at the wrong time. “I urge everyone to reach agreement and peace in this matter and sincerely congratulate you on the upcoming Christmas, which we want to celebrate together with the Orthodox at the same time - on December 25,” the pontiff said.
In order to receive a reward, you need to contact the Apostolic Nunciature in Moscow at the address: Vadkovsky lane, 7/37 or by phone +7 (495) 726-59-30, providing identification documents, as well as any evidence of the celebration of Christmas on December 25.”

All of the above resources posted this news with a link to the site panorama.pub, however, only in one of four cases, in addition to this, we see a note at the end of the material: “All texts on this site are grotesque parodies of reality and are not real news.” And under another publication it is said that the Panorama news agency is an “unreliable source.”

These notes are absolutely appropriate, because Panorama is a satirical publication that positions itself as such. The phrase about grotesque parodies accompanies each of its materials, but not all third-party resources post it when copying news. Needless to say, many readers unfamiliar with the specifics of Panorama take its news published on other sites at face value. And they even distribute it themselves:

Interestingly, the address and telephone number indicated in the publication are absolutely real and actually belong to Apostolic Nunciature in Moscow. As a result, journalists from another resource, Sib.fm, turned directly to the nunciature for clarification and received expected refutation: “No, nothing like that was promised. This is not true." At the same time, summarizing the exposure of the Panorama material, Sib.fm journalists never mentioned the humorous nature of the publication.

Thus, here we are dealing with a satirical news story that may have been perceived out of context.