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CLAIMS CIRCULATING ON social media have incorrectly suggested that RTÉ is set to replace the Angelus with a Muslim call to prayer.
The claim has been shared hundreds of times on Facebook and X, and originated from a screenshot of a satirical article that was posted online on 10 March.
The screenshot features a headline that says “Muslim call to prayer set to replace Angelus on RTÉ” beneath a tag that says “breaking”, though it does not indicate what outlet first reported the supposed news.
The Angelus is a Catholic devotion commemorating Jesus, and is broadcast on RTÉ radio twice a day (at 12pm and 6pm) and on RTÉ television at 6pm every day.
The claim suggesting that RTÉ was replacing the Angelus attracted particular ire among anti-immigrant social media users and groups, who leaned into the Great Replacement conspiracy theory by suggesting it was further evidence of Islamic culture replacing Western traditions.
The Journal searched for the image using Meta’s content library and discovered that it originated on a page called Ireland on Craic on 10 March.
The page is run by two Irish admins for a satirical news website of the same name, where the article can be found.
It describes itself on Facebook as publishing “satire from the entertainment capital of the world. Yes, Tullamore in Co. Offaly”.
The website’s ‘about’ section also contains the same description, alongside a disclaimer that says “All our stories are made up and complete fiction, just like in other forms of comedy”.
Despite this, the screenshot that was originally posted to the Ireland on Craic Facebook page was subsequently re-shared by at least four other pages or profiles with significant followings.
They include pages run by a group called the Yellow Vests, an Irish group that has adopted the name of the grassroots populist protest group that originated in France in 2018.
The Irish group’s activities are now largely limited to posting on Facebook, where it shares anti-vaccine and anti-immigration content across various pages.
A post on the Yellow Vest Ireland – Dublin page about the Angelus on 10 March was re-shared 100 times; the false claim was also shared by other pages around 100 times.
The claim also migrated to X, where one account posted a video on 11 March purporting to show the “new Angelus”.
The video, which has been viewed over 50,000 times, showed a broadcast of the Angelus on the RTÉ Player overlaid with audio from an Islamic call to prayer taken from YouTube.
An RTÉ spokesperson declined to comment, but pointed to the satirical nature of the website where the claim originated.
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