THE Pope Francis Interview: What Would You Ask?

By now, the blogosphere is chock full of “takes” on that amazing America Magazine interview with Pope Francis. Major kudos to Fr. Matt Malone, S.J., America’s Editor in Chief (who explains the interview process here), Fr. Antonio Spadaro, S.J. of Civiltà Cattolica, and the entire team behind this groundbreaking 10,000+ word look inside the mind and heart of our Holy Father.

I’m not going to excerpt any of the interview here. The team behind this profile deserves for ALL of us to go to their work directly and to read the article in full. Better yet, read it, but also subscribe to the print edition to keep articles like this coming.

I’ve been trying to figure out all day what I would ask Pope Francis if I had the opportunity to conduct the interview of a lifetime. So many of my questions were addressed in the article (the role of women in the Church, his prayer life, his thoughts on Jesuits and religious…) that it seems little remains unasked. I decided on three questions:

Please share one experience of saying ‘yes’ to God’s will for your life and share how this has graced you.
Please share with me a bit about your mother and how she impacted you spiritually and personally?
I’m one of your nine million Twitter followers. How do you decide what to tweet and how does that process happen? (Somehow I doubt Pope Francis carries a smartphone…). What advice do you have for the faithful who want to share our passion for our faith via media and IRL (in real life)?

Finally, if you’d like to linger with this interview a bit longer and have it in e-book format, “A Big Heart Open to God: A Conversation with Francis” is now available as a kindle download.

Now it’s your turn. What would you ask Pope Francis in a private interview?