Following the death of Pope Francis on April 21, 2025, rumors spread online about a supposed Catholic tradition in which the pontiff is tapped on the head with a silver hammer three times to confirm his death.
This claim spread on Facebook and X; Snopes readers also searched the website for information on a "pope hammer." The silver hammer legend is a longtime rumor — Snopes first fact-checked it in 2005, as cited by community notes on this X post.
As we determined a decade ago, this claim is unproven. Snopes' original story states that we await a pronouncement from the Vatican to confirm or debunk this rumor; that remains true as of this writing. We reached out to the Vatican and will update this story if they respond.
However, the lack of mention of a hammer in the Vatican's official documents addressing the rites following a pope's death suggests that this particular alleged tradition is, at the very least, no longer in practice. It is unclear if a silver hammer is used or has ever been used as part of the Roman Catholic Church's traditions, whether symbolic or to legitimately confirm the pope's death. Many experts also say this rumor has no basis in historical evidence.
Per the Vatican, Francis' death by stroke and cardiocirculatory collapse was confirmed via electrocardiographic thanatography, a specialized ECG recording used to confirm that the heart has stopped.
The pope's funeral rites
The Vatican's apostolic constitution, or Universi Dominici Gregis — which governs the norms following a pope's death, among other rules — does not make any mention of the pope being tapped on the head with a hammer.
Vatican News, the church's official publication, made no mention of a silver hammer in reports about Francis' death and the aftermath. Videos the Vatican released of the "rite of the ascertainment of death" for Francis do not show a hammer.
Cardinal Camerlengo Kevin Farrell presides over the rite of the ascertainment of death and the placement of the late Pope Francis' body in the coffin, which took place on Monday evening in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta. pic.twitter.com/63aPKTW9nD
— Vatican News (@VaticanNews) April 22, 2025
According to Joanne M. Pierce, professor emerita of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross, after medical professionals certify the pope's death and the body lies in rest in the chapel, the cardinal serving as the pope's camerlengo — the pope's chief of staff — formally calls the deceased pope by the full name given to him.
This is the moment when, according to the legend, the pope is "tapped three times on the forehead with a small silver hammer," Pierce wrote in U.S. news outlet The Conversation.
"However, there is no documented proof that this was actually done in earlier centuries to verify a pope's death," Pierce added.
Traditionally, the camerlengo also breaks the pope's ring — which can act as a seal on official documents — to prevent anyone else from using it. Each pope wears a ring with an engraved image of a man fishing from a boat; this "Fisherman's Ring" is a reference to a part of the Bible in which Jesus calls St. Peter a "fisher of men."
Legend of the silver hammer
Reports differ as to whether the Roman Catholic Church once used a hammer as part of the death verification process for a pope. As we stated back in 2005:
In the wake of the death of Pope John Paul II on 2 April 2005, news outlets and other sources have issued a variety of contradictory statements about the use of a silver hammer in connection with a pope's death: it's an old, discontinued practice, or it remains a current practice; the use of the hammer once served a functional purpose, or its use is (and always has been) purely symbolic.
Per our previous story, The Guardian in a 2003 article stated that the ritual happened as fact — then ran this correction a few weeks later, citing the Vatican (emphasis ours):
The article below included the assertion that the corpse of a Pope is ritually struck on the head with a silver hammer to ascertain that there is no sign of life. According to the Vatican, this is a myth.
However, The Guardian did not name a specific Vatican official or explain how this was determined.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica even cited the hammer legend as fact. In fact, it's been "repeated countless times as early as the 1850s," according to a USAToday fact-check citing Ulrich Lehner, a University of Notre Dame theology professor.
Lehner told USAToday it is "one of the most persistently repeated fake claims" and that even "renowned historians have repeated it."
Furthermore, the Rev. David J. Collins, a Christian historian at Georgetown University, said via email