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The moment Sky News announced the Pope’s death was the very definition of a screeching handbrake turn for the ages

Scott Bryan. Updated April 22nd, 2025

On Sunday morning, Pope Francis died, just a day after he delivered his Easter Sunday message from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

His Easter message was written about in all of the newspapers the following day, so it was a bit unfortunate that on the Sky News Press Preview on Monday, political journalist Zoë Grünewald said that it was great that the Pope was feeling better, moments before host Gareth Barlow broke the news that Pope Francis had just died.

How close was it? This close.

Of course, she did nothing wrong. It was just one of those strange coincidences.

Proper “I’m on live TV” moment this morning when I was talking about how well the pope looked and sounded yesterday only for the presenter to interrupt us to announce that the pope, had in fact, just died

— Zoë Grünewald (@zoegrunewald.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 11:46 AM

Insert “Curb Your Enthusiasm” music here.

I don’t think there’s ever been such a prime example of unintentional comic timing

— Jack Price-Harbach (@jackpriceharbach.bsky.social) 21 April 2025 at 21:00

Turns out, she might not have been the only one.

Similar thing happened to a Adelaide-based evening TV news program in Australia (Adelaide’s timezone is halfway between Australia’s east coast and west coast): literally ran a highlight piece concerning Easter at the Vatican… and within ten minutes, Pope Francis’s death was announced on-air.

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— Veritas on KW (@veritasonkw.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 4:08 PM

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JD Vance visited the Pope just hours before he died and basically the entirety of the internet said the same thing