In a wide-ranging interview with a left-leaning Italian newspaper, Pope Francis has lamented a “Vatican-centric” view prevailing within the Roman Curia and said “I’ll do everything I can to change it”.
On the subject of Church leaders, he said: “You know what I think about this? Heads of the Church have often been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers. The court is the leprosy of the papacy.”
The interview with Eugenio Scalfari, the atheist editor of La Repubblica, followed a long letter the Pope sent the paper in September, in response to an editorial.
Then the Pope followed up with a phone call, suggesting a meeting.
Scalfari said the two joked about whether one wanted to convert the other, and the Pope said: “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.”
When Scalfari observed that some priests make him anti-clerical, the Pope replied sympathetically: “It also happens to me that when I meet a clericalist, I suddenly become anti-clerical. Clericalism should not have anything to do with Christianity.”
Questioned about the problems facing the Church today, Pope Francis answered: “The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old. The old need care and companionship; the young need work and hope but have neither one nor the other, and the problem is they don’t even look for them any more. They have been crushed by the present.
“You tell me: can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.”
Francis also revealed he had an unusual spiritual experience just after the conclave elected him.
As he fought off anxiety and doubt, the Pope recalls, “I closed my eyes and I no longer had any anxiety or emotion. At a certain point I was filled with a great light. It lasted a moment, but to me it seemed very long.”
Sources:
Image: Catholic Online
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