In the days since the pope died, memes have flourished suggesting YouTuber Trisha Paytas — who is pregnant with her third child — will soon give birth to the pope reincarnate. It’s the latest chapter in an ongoing internet joke that Paytas’s babies are reincarnations of major world leaders, which started in 2022 when she had her first child less than a week after Queen Elizabeth II died. Naturally, the memes resurfaced on Monday thanks to the fact that Paytas had announced she was pregnant with her third child a month before the pope died. This time, it seems like Paytas caught wind of the online prophecy — on a Tuesday episode of her podcast, Just Trish, she addressed the joke.
During the episode, Paytas’s guest, fellow YouTuber Shane Dawson, told her her name had been trending alongside that of the late pope. “I think you can guess why,” Dawson said. Paytas initially tried to distance herself from the papal allegations, saying she doesn’t “understand why my womb is carrying all these souls.”
“I just don’t get it,” Paytas said. “First of all, I’m, like, months away from my due date, not even close this time. He’s not the British monarch. Is it just, like, any influential person that dies gets to come reincarnate as my baby?” Dawson explained that the memes pop up whenever a “historic person of power” dies while she’s pregnant, prompting people to “kind of associate the two.” Dawson also pointed out that “everyone’s, like, kind of sad” about Francis’s death due to him being more supportive of the LGBTQ+ community. “Ohhhh, love!” Paytas said, apparently more onboard with the idea of gestating such a progressive figure.
By the end of the conversation, Paytas was so okay with the concept of her baby being the reincarnated pope that she was floating naming it either Pope or Francis. She promised to keep fans abreast if she starts to “feel a little holier” during her pregnancy. Stay tuned, I guess!
