Fact check: No, Queen Elizabeth II, President Joe Biden and Pope Francis are not related

The claim: Queen Elizabeth II, President Joe Biden and Pope Francis are related to each other

Queen Elizabeth II's funeral brought many world leaders together, including President Joe Biden, who was there alongside first lady Jill Biden. Pope Francis, who first met the queen eight years ago, did not attend but chose instead to send a representative in his place.

An Oct. 14 Instagram post, though, claims Biden, Elizabeth and Francis are connected in a more significant way than each of them being a well-known public figure.

“These entities are all related family,” reads the post, which accumulated more than 3,400 likes in 10 days. “Pope Francis is Queen Elizabeths brother & Joe Biden they cousin (sic)."

Many commenters appeared to believe the claim, including a social media user who said, "All of those Criminals are related ... it's already a Fact!"

Another social media user tied the claim in the post to a baseless conspiracy theory that Biden died "a few years ago."

But the claim is false. There is no evidence the three leaders are related to one another.

In the video attached to the post, a male's voice says, "I don't have any facts behind this except for my intuition," and later references a decades-old conspiracy theory that the world is secretly run by reptilian elites who mask themselves as humans.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the post for comment. The user did not provide additional evidence to support the claim.

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Claim based on debunked 'reptilian' conspiracy theory

In 1998, former BBC sports reporter David Icke published "The Biggest Secret," which featured interviews with "two Brits who claimed members of the royal family are nothing more than reptiles with crowns," according to Time.

Since then, many prominent figures have become targets of the oft-debunked conspiracy theory, including Elizabeth and Biden, as well as Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg (who was asked directly about the claim – and denied it).

But reptilian conspiracies aside, there is no evidence that Biden, Elizabeth and Francis are related. No reputable publication or agency has ever made or proven such a claim.

A family tree of the British royal family compiled by the BBC doesn't mention Biden or Francis. Elizabeth had only one sibling, Princess Margaret, her younger sister, who died in 2002.

Pope Francis, who was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is originally from Argentina and is the son of Italian immigrants, according to a Vatican biography.

“His father Mario was an accountant employed by the railways and his mother Regina Sivori was a committed wife dedicated to raising their five children,” the biography says.

An in-depth article published in the New Yorker earlier this year details Biden's family history. It doesn't mention Elizabeth or Francis, but it does reference Biden's “emphasis on his Irish roots and his middle-class background.”

Two of Biden's great-great-grandfathers were originally from Ireland, according to The Irish Times.

Lead Stories has also debunked the claim.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that Elizabeth, Biden and Francis are related to each other. There is no evidence the three are related. The claim is tied to a long-running but baseless conspiracy theory about reptilian elites.

Our fact-check sources:

• USA TODAY, Sept. 19, Queen Elizabeth II funeral updates: Queen laid to rest alongside husband in private ceremony

• USA TODAY, Sept. 17, Queen updates: Biden arrives in London for funeral; Queen's grandchildren stand vigil by coffin

• USA TODAY, April 3, 2014, Queen Elizabeth II meets Pope Francis in the Vatican

• BBC, Sept. 16, Queen Elizabeth II: Pope to send Liverpool priest to monarch's funeral

• USA TODAY, Sept. 15, Fact check: Satirical video about Joe Biden's secret death circulates, taken seriously by some

• Time, accessed Oct. 25, The Reptilian Elite

• PolitiFact, Sept. 12, Reptilian conspiracy theory continues after queen’s death

• PolitiFact, March 22, 2021, No, this video doesn’t prove Biden isn’t human

• The Washington Post, June 15, 2016, ‘I am not a lizard’: Mark Zuckerberg is latest celebrity asked about reptilian conspiracy

• USA TODAY, July 22, 2021, Fact check: False claims that Jeff Bezos is an alien, reptile draw on conspiracy theories

• Royal.uk, accessed Oct. 25, Princess Margaret

• Vatican.va, accessed Oct. 25, Biography of the Holy Father Francis

• The New Yorker, Aug. 15, 2022, The Untold History of the Biden Family

• The Irish Times, Nov. 22, 2020, Ancestors of Biden, Obama, JFK, Reagan left Ireland ‘within some 10 years of each other’

• Lead Stories, Oct. 21, Fact Check: Pope Francis Is NOT Queen Elizabeth II's Brother Or Joe Biden's Cousin

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Biden is not related to Queen Elizabeth II and the pope