Swedish public television (SVT) mistakenly published an obituary for Pope John Paul II on its website, where it remained for more than five hours before it was taken down, the broadcasting company said on Friday.
“This was a very unfortunate mistake,” SVT spokesperson Johanna Niemi said.
An SVT employee had been working on the pope’s obituary in advance when he mistakenly hit a button that posted the text on the website, Niemi said.
Under a picture of the ailing pontiff in an audience with the Swedish king and queen, the website stated: “Pope John Paul has died”.
“The text was posted at about 4pm (3pm GMT) on Thursday and remained online for about five hours,” she said.
Writing obituaries in advance is standard practice in many large news companies, and SVT’s policy is to write the text as soon as it becomes known that a very famous person has fallen seriously ill. — AFP