Mel Gibson criticized the Vatican in this 2021 video, not Hollywood

Actor Mel Gibson has recently and repeatedly been connected with claims that he’s working on a child sex trafficking documentary, despite rebuttals from his publicist and someone involved with the project who say that’s wrong. 

Now a new social media post suggests a video of Gibson shows him "exposing Hollywood elites and the satanic child trafficking." 

But that’s wrong, too. 

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Though the video lacks context, it’s still clear that Gibson isn’t talking about Hollywood. 

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He refers to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Pope Francis, and his 2004 movie, "The Passion of the Christ." He criticizes Catholic bishops as "hirelings." He doesn’t mention or even allude to child sex trafficking, or the sexual abuse of children. 

We took a screenshot of the video and a reverse image search led us to discover that Gibson recorded the video in 2021, when it was shared at a rally for the Coalition of Canceled Priests, then a new organization for priests whose bishops "had removed them from the ministry for defying church authorities or expressing controversial opinions," according to the National Catholic Reporter.

Gibson endorsed the group in the video and criticized the Vatican.  

We rate claims that this video shows Gibson exposing Hollywood elites and satanic child trafficking False.