Controversial interview with pope removed from Vatican website

Details from National Catholic Register: 

Pope Francis’ interview with Eugenio Scalfari, the atheist founder of La Repubblica, has been taken down from the Vatican website, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi confirmed today.

The Oct. 1 interview, which was also published in L’Osservatore Romano, was criticised for its inaccuracies after it emerged that Scalfari hadn’t recorded it.

“The information in the interview is reliable on a general level but not on the level of each individual point analysed. This is why it was decided the text should not be available for consultation on the Holy See website,” Fr. Lombardi told reporters Friday. “Its removal is a final update on the nature of this text. Some mistakes were made regarding its value, which was questioned. The Secretariat of State took the decision.”

Last month Antonio Socci, a Catholic columnist for the Italian newspaper “Libero,” wrote that after the publication of the interview, Pope Francis was fully aware of the risk of misunderstanding of some of his words, particularly those on conscience.

For this reason, he said, Fr. Lombardi was “told to maintain that the text of the interview had not been revised by Pope Francis and that it was penned by Scalfari after an informal chat.”

Read more.