The Crescat
… What was all that cryptic tweeting about last night? Why another Pope Francis interview of course. This time with La Repubblica’s founder, Eugenio Scalfari. The full text can be found here.
Below you’ll find some excerpts from the interview. Mr. Scalfari’s questions and comments are in bold, followed by the Pope’s responses. My thoughts are interjected after each block quote. However if you were to ask me to sum up the interview with a single quote it would be this — Pope Francis states, “I have the humility and ambition to want to do something.”
Maybe the headline should read; Pope Declares Himself Humble
Your Holiness, is there is a single vision of the Good? And who decides what it is?
“Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good.”
That sounds an awful lot like relativism. But I’m sure something was just lost in translation. You know English isn’t his first language. Or maybe he was just being intentionally vague or something because he was talking with an atheist. Just insert whatever excuse and move on.
It’s a joke I tell him. My friends think it is you want to convert me.
He smiles again and replies: “Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.
Ha. Ha. Lulz. You mean this bit of nonsense. — “Go therefore and teach all nations…”
When asked what saints are dear to him, the Pope responds with St. Francis and St. Paul. Which prompts Scalfari to ask: Not Ignatius, from whose order you come?
“Ignatius, for understandable reasons, is the saint I know better than any other. He founded our Order. I’d like to remind you that Carlo Maria Martini also came from that order, someone who is very dear to me and also to you.”
Ah, Carlo Martini, who famously supported the ordination of female deacons and same-sex unions – among many other things contradictory to Church teaching.
You heard your calling at a young age?
“No, not very young. My family wanted me to have a different profession, to work, earn some money. I went to university. I also had a teacher for whom I had a lot of respect and developed friendship and who was a fervent communist. She often read Communist Party texts to me and gave them to me to read. So I also got to know that very materialistic conception. I remember that she also gave me the statement from the American Communists in defense of the Rosenbergs, who had been sentenced to death. The woman I’m talking about was later arrested, tortured and killed by the dictatorship then ruling in Argentina.”
Obama, Frank Marshall Davis, and Jeremiah Wright. Oh my.
Pope Francis told me: “The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old.
But that, that right there leaves me speechless. Unemployed young people and lonely elderly are the worst most serious evil that afflict the world?!
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not be lonely and have a job.” [Narcissus 3:16]
Josse Lieferinxe, Crucifixion c. 1500-05
UPDATED: For those who think this is merely a translation issue, please see here.
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