Eugenio Scalfari
Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Get ready for another episode of “What did the Pope really say?” after the media once again (mis)quotes Pope Francis and claims that he told an Italian journalist that “all the divorced who ask will be admitted” to Communion.
Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register is setting the record straight about a comment by the Pope that was allegedly made during a private phone conversation last week with the 91 year-old atheist journalist, Eugenio Scalfari.
According to Scalfari’s November 1st article in La Repubblica, the Pope began by telling him that the family will always exist because it’s the “support beam” of sociability.
However, he then said: “The diverse opinion of the bishops is part of this modernity of the Church and of the diverse societies in which she operated, but the goal is the same, and for that which regards the admission of the divorced to the Sacraments, [it] confirms that this principle has been accepted by the Synod. This is the bottom line result, the de facto appraisals are entrusted to the confessors, but at the end of faster or slower paths, all the divorced who ask will be admitted.”
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told the Register today: “As has already occurred in the past, Scalfari refers in quotes what the Pope supposedly told him, but many times it does not correspond to reality, since he does not record nor transcribe the exact words of the Pope, as he himself has said many times. So it is clear that what is being reported by him in the latest article about the divorced and remarried is in no way reliable and cannot be considered as the Pope’s thinking.”
This isn’t the first time Scalfari has published statements by the pope that were not exactly accurate. In 2013, Scalfari claimed that the Pope said even atheists who don’t believe in Jesus could go to heaven if they are good people. In reality, the pope was referring to the fact that there could be natural goodness or virtue found outside the Church.
The journalist also claimed that the Pope told him that “everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.”
Scalfari later admitted that this probably wasn’t exactly what the pope said. But this isn’t surprising as he has admitted to not using a recording device or taking notes when a person is speaking with him.
“I try to understand the person I am interviewing, and after that, I write his answers with my own words,” Scalfari explained.
This explains why an atheist would so consistently misquote theological concepts that are obviously way over his head.
This is why Father Lombardi told the Register that he has no intention of issuing another statement about Scalfari because those who “work in Italy know the way Scalfari writes and knows these things well.”
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