A couple of local broadsheets have upset many readers by quoting Pope Francis on their front pages as saying, “Don’t breed like rabbits.” This wasn’t a simple case of a “sound bite biting back,” as a colleague on this page has suggested; it was a case of the conscript media manipulating the quote to make it appear as though the Pope were reproaching Filipinos for being excessively procreative. They aren’t, and he wasn’t; he never did.

The quote was taken from the Pope’s airborne press conference on his flight back to Rome at the end of his four-day apostolic and state visit to the Philippines. The transcript of that interview, translated unofficially from the Italian into English by one of the traveling journalists, has been published online, and shows the context of how the “rabbits,” as it were, came out of the forest.

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