Vatican
City, 20 September 2013 (VIS) – Pope Francis has granted a lengthy
interview, published in the Italian Jesuit magazine “La Civilta
Cattolica” and simultaneously in another sixteen magazines linked
to the Society of Jesus throughout the world. The interview was the
result of three private meetings and more than six hours of
discussion between the Pope and the editor of “La Civilta
Cattolica”, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, during the month of August at the
Santa Marta guesthouse.
In
the interview, more than thirty pages long, the Pope talks frankly
about himself, his artistic and literary tastes (Dostoyevski and
Holderlin, Borges and Cervantes, Caravaggio and Chagall, but also
Fellini's “La Strada”, Rossellini, “Babette's Feast”, Mozart,
and Wagner's “Tetralogy”), and his experience in the Society of
Jesus and as archbishop of Buenos Aires. He defines himself as “a
sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of
speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.”
Referring
to his period as Provincial in the Society of Jesus, he says, “My
authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have
serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative”.
However, as archbishop this experience helped him to understand the
importance of listening to the viewpoints of others. “I believe
that consultation is very important. The consistories, the synods
are, for example, important places to make real and active this
consultation. We must, however, give them a less rigid form”.
He
also talks about how his Jesuit training, and the process of
discernment in particular, have enabled him to better face his
ministry. “For example, many think that changes and reforms can
take place in a short time. I believe that we always need time to lay
the foundations for real, effective change. … The wisdom of
discernment redeems the necessary ambiguity of life and helps us find
the most appropriate means, which do not always coincide with what
looks great and strong.”
For
the Pope, the Church nowadays is most in need of “the ability to
heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs
nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after
battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has
high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to
heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the
wounds, heal the wounds. ... And you have to start from the ground
up. The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in
small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first
proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you! … Instead of being just a
church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us
try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step
outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who
have quit or are indifferent”.
With
reference to complex questions such as homosexuality or the situation
of divorced and remarried Catholics, he insists on the need to
“always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the
human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany
them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany
them with mercy”.
The
Pope added that “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are
not all equivalent” and “The church’s pastoral ministry cannot
be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of
doctrines to be imposed insistently. … We have to find a new
balance. … The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple,
profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral
consequences then flow”.
Reflecting
on the role of women in the Church, he reiterated that “the
feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions. The
challenge today is this: to think about the specific place of women
also in those places where the authority of the church is exercised
for various areas of the church”.
Another
theme considered during the interview was the importance of the
Vatican Council II as “a re-reading of the Gospel in light of
contemporary culture,” says the Pope. “Vatican II produced a
renewal movement that simply comes from the same Gospel. Its fruits
are enormous. Just recall the liturgy. The work of liturgical reform
has been a service to the people as a re-reading of the Gospel from a
concrete historical situation. Yes, there are hermeneutics of
continuity and discontinuity, but one thing is clear: the dynamic of
reading the Gospel, actualising its message for today – which was
typical of Vatican II – is absolutely irreversible”.
In
the final passages of the interview, Francis spoke of the “temptation
to seek God in the past or in a possible future”, and remarked that
“God is certainly in the past because we can see the footprints.
And God is also in the future as a promise. But the ‘concrete’
God, so to speak, is today. For this reason, complaining never helps
us find God. The complaints of today about how ‘barbaric’ the
world is – these complaints sometimes end up giving birth within
the Church to desires to establish order in the sense of pure
conservation, as a defence. No: God is to be encountered in the world
of today”.
The
full text of the interview can be found the online editions of
American Magazine (www.americanmagazine.org) and the UK-based
Thinking Faith (www.thinkingfaith.org).
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