How “list of popes who died violently” became a semi-protected Wikipedia article
It started on April 21, 2025. You might be able to guess why.
The Wikipedia article “list of popes who died violently” has been edited 69 times since April 21, 2025, after seeing less than 600 edits in the 18 years since it was created in April of 2007. The reason is simple: an internet meme around the idea that Pope Francis was murdered by JD Vance began circulating. The first of these edits occurred at 01:12, 22 April 2025, by an unregistered user with the IP address 2600:1700:4e6b:600:e8f5:df1d:3b54:cdbc.
The edit was relatively simple. It was the addition of the last bullet point to the list of “Murdered popes",” which had previously ended with John XIV, who was murdered in 984.
Within one minute, the edit was reverted by an editor who left the note “likely factual errors.”
Less than an hour later, a registered user with nine previous edits edited the same section to read:
This time it included the dates of Pope Francis’s tenure, an inaccurately structured link to JD Vance’s page, but no bullet point. Otherwise, it was the same edit. Minutes later, the editor added a bullet point and updated it to read “met US Vice President J.D Vance.” The link continued not to work (as the it should have been [[JD Vance]], not [[J.D Vance]]).
The unregistered edits continued, with the next reversion coming from another registered editor, who summed up the edits so far with a simple statement: “As funny as it is, it's still vandalism.”
If you think that would be the end of, you’re solely mistaken (and you evidently don’t have much history with Wikipedia vandalism).
But let’s dwell on that concept for a moment. Vandalism.
Wait, what is Wikipedia vandalism?
If you’re unfamiliar with Wikipedia vandalism, there are two excellent sources, both of which can be found on Wikipedia itself:
The article Vandalism on Wikipedia
The project page Wikipedia:Vandalism
If you’re unfamiliar with the difference between an article and a project page, articles are probably what you are used to reading on Wikipedia. Most of the website is articles. A project page, meanwhile, is an informative page on Wikipedia, about Wikipedia itself.
The project page gives the definitive definition:
editing (or other behavior) deliberately intended to obstruct or defeat the project's purpose, which is to create a free encyclopedia, in a variety of languages, presenting the sum of all human knowledge.
You’re almost certainly familiar with Wikipedia vandalism, even if you don’t know that’s what it’s called. It’s common for screenshots of vandalism to be posted across social media. This has been a common occurrence over the last week.
Why does “JD Vance murdered Pope Francis” count as vandalism?
The answer should be simple enough: while the people making the edits above are doing so for the purpose of being funny, they are deliberately adding a falsehood to the page.
However, the edits over the last week have not been as simple as “JD Vance did the murder” and “No, he didn’t, so I’m reverting this.” A third narrative began to arise, suggesting that the power and prevalence of the “JD Vance murdered Pope Francis” internet meme was so well-documented and covered that it should be included in the article.
The “this joke belongs on this website” narrative
On Monday, April 22—after dozens of acts of vandalism and reversions—an unregistered editor with no edit history attempted a new section:
Internet theories and memes surrounding the murder of Popes
This is a collection of Internet humour surrounding the deaths of Popes. Jokes, conspiracy theories and the likes have started due to the untimely events surrounding the death of some Popes
Francis (1936–2025), met with JD Vance the 20th of April which allegedly however unlikely, resulted in Pope Francis's health rapidly declining, he was pronounced dead the following morning, 21st of April 2025. [22]
The untimely death of Pope Francis after meeting with JD Vance has sparked a lot of internet humour, including satirical imagery also known as memes, vandalism of Wikipedia pages and other internet humour.[23][24]
While not the strongest section, it seems to be a good faith contribution. Punctuation, capitalization, grammar: all these things need work.
The section lasted until later in the day on April 22, when another registered editor deleted the section, clarifying:
Unrelated to the list. Add such content to Death and funeral of Pope Francis
As of now, there is no longer any mention of the “JD Vance murdered the pope” on the page—and it has also not been successfully added to the “Death and funeral of Pope Francis” article.
But that’s not it. I still haven’t answered the central question I mentioned in the headline of this: when and why did the page go from having no protection to “semi-protection” status.
The page was semi-protected because of vandalism—but not because of the efforts to add coverage of the joke itself
Later on the day April 22—but before the section “Internet theories and memes surrounding the murder of Popes” had been removed—an administrator with 43,000+ edits protected the page:
Protected "List of popes who died violently": Addition of unsourced or poorly sourced content ([Edit=Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access] (expires 09:36, 13 May 2025 (UTC)) [Move=Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access] (expires 09:36, 13 May 2025 (UTC)))
It’s worth noting that this section was allowed to remain when the semi-protection status was applied:
Internet theories and memes surrounding the murder of Popes
This is a collection of Internet humour surrounding the deaths of Popes. Jokes, conspiracy theories, memes and more have started due to the untimely events surrounding the passings of Popes.
Francis (1936–2025), met with JD Vance the 20th of April which allegedly however unlikely, resulted in Pope Francis's health rapidly declining, he was pronounced dead the following morning, 21st of April 2025.[22] The untimely death of Pope Francis after meeting with JD Vance sparked a lot of internet humour in April 2025, including satirical imagery also known as memes, vandalism of Wikipedia pages and other internet humour.[23][24][better source needed]
Yes, it was still a rough section. But this inclusion was not vandalism and was not the reason the page was moved to semi-protection. While it has been removed, one could argue that it should not be.
I’d like to end this with a plea:
To whomever reads this, I would like to request something of you: don’t vandalize Wikipedia. If you want to contribute to Wikipedia in fun ways, learn how to be an editor first. Cite your sources. Make an effort similar to the “Internet theories and memes surrounding the murder of Popes” writers, attempting to document a meme or joke instead of trying to perpetuate or create a new one.
I’m not saying you should consider Wikipedia to be sacred. I’m not saying it’s the most important thing in the world. I’ll say one thing about Wikipedia vandalism: it’s annoying, and if you do it, you’re annoying.
And if you do want to try to write something on Wikipedia that makes you laugh and makes others laugh to, aspire toward something like well-sourced, well-crafted, clever entry:
That is what you should aspire toward, Wikipedia vandals. Do something better. It’s beautiful.