President William Ruto was not in attendance and does not feature in the original video.
A video accompanying an X (formerly Twitter) post claiming that President William Ruto was in attendance during Father Charles Kinyua’s mass has been altered.
In the video, the priest is conducting mass, and seconds in, President Ruto is seen among the congregation. In the 34-second-long video, the priest is recorded reading a verse from the Bible condemning thieves.
The post’s caption reads: “I like the boldness of Kenyans!”
The priest then humorously asks thieves present during the mass if they heard the word from the Bible and if there were any attending the mass.
In the clip, President Ruto is seen among the congregation, whose majority are priests, seemingly frowning.
A search on YouTube for Father Charles Kinyua’s Mass revealed that President Ruto was not an attendant among the congregation during the Mass.
The original clip on YouTube does not feature a congregation and further shows that the mass was online as indicated on the tagline on the priest’s YouTube channel with only choir members who could be heard singing in the background.
Moreover, the section of the mass shared on the video circulated on X as seen from min 1:00:23 does not feature Ruto.
Further scrutiny of the alleged video keyframes using Google reverse image search shows the original footage where the president was present with the same attire and the company he was in, was posted on 29 June 2024, when a delegation of Christian clergy visited the State House.
In the footage, as reported by NTV, the clergy had gone to the statehouse in response to the president’s call to have them sway their followers towards dialogue following protests in the country.
Lake Region Bulletin has established that the video used in the claim has been edited to include President William Ruto. The footage of the president was derived from a different function at the State House.
This fact-check was produced by Lake Region Bulletin under the African Fact-Checking Incubator programme, with support from PesaCheck, Code For Africa’s fact-checking initiative, and the African Fact-checking Alliance (AFCA).
