It says, in part:
Pope Francis comes with some heavy and disturbing baggage. Francis is on record stating that women are nothing more than the helpers of men, and are themselves unfit for political office. In a speech against Argentina presidential candidate Cristina Kirchner given in 2007, during the electoral campaign, then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio said: "Women are naturally unfit for political office. Both the natural order and facts show us that the political being par excellence is male; the Scripture shows us that woman has always been the helper of man who thinks and does, but nothing more."
He's "on record" as saying this, says this piece: and quotes its source as this story from a publication called "Inside Costa Rica". In Spanish, the story is also carried in the Costa Rican El Pais.
There are over 130 different web-pages currently showing this quote in English (and more in the original Spanish): and tweets, Google+ mentions, and more. Just one atheist organisation in Mexico managed to get this story re-shared over 11,000 times on Facebook. The story is, according to one Spanish blog, "erudite and irrefutable evidence of a misogynistic church".
What a horrible man the new pope apparently is.
Except.
He didn't say it.
The original quote was first seen on Yahoo Answers, in Spanish, and starts:
Buenos Aires, 4 de junio (Télam) - El arzobispo de Buenos Aires, cardenal Jorge Bergoglio, afirmó que “las mujeres son naturalmente ineptas para eje...which, if you look carefully, looks as if it came from Télam, the Argentinian press agency (roughly equivalent to PA here).
A search back through Télam's archives should, of course, show this story's origin. Except it doesn't exist.
Googling the text (in English or French) shows that this text has never appeared in any form before March 13th 2013 - except in this Yahoo Answers post. Yahoo Answers is a user-generated forum, and this was posted by someone who went under the name "Bumper Crop". It gained a few comments, and disappeared: until Pope Francis was elected, and a few people went off to search Google for embarrassing stories about the new guy.
I speak regularly about the lies and rumours that circled on Twitter during the London riots - indeed, I launched a website, tweetresponsibly.net, which lays out the five rules for using Twitter, and other social networks, responsibly.
Whatever you think of the Catholic Church (and there's other things to worry about): if you tweeted, shared or plussed a comment about Pope Francis thinking that women were 'naturally unfit', perhaps you might issue a correction.
And what was El Pais in Costa Rica doing? It certainly wasn't journalism.
More reading
Research into this story from outono.net - in Spanish
Phew! Very nearly shared that one – that’ll learn me!! How easy it is to simply believe (or: jump on the bandwagon) as long as it fits in with the picture we have already drawn for ourselves…