The Vatican
on Thursday rebuked a well-known Italian journalist who quoted Pope Francis as
saying hell does not exist.
The Vatican issued a statement after the comments spread on
social media, saying they did not properly reflect what the pope had said.
Eugenio Scalfari, 93, an avowed atheist who has struck up an
intellectual friendship with Francis, met the pope recently and wrote up a long
story that included a question-and-answer section at the end.
The Vatican said the pope did
not grant him an interview and the article “was the fruit of his
reconstruction” not a “faithful transcription of the Holy Father’s words”.
Scalfari, the founder of
Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper, has prided himself on not taking notes and not
using tape recorders during his encounters with leaders and later
reconstructing the meetings to create lengthy articles.
According to Scalfari’s
article in Thursday’s La Repubblica, he asked the pope where “bad souls” go and
where they are punished. Scalfari quoted the pope as saying:
“They are not punished. Those
who repent obtain God’s forgiveness and take their place among the ranks of
those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot be forgiven
disappear. A Hell doesn’t exist, the disappearance of sinning souls exists.”
The universal catechism of
the Catholic Church says “The teaching of the Catholic Church affirms the
existence of hell and its eternity.” It speaks of “eternal fire” and adds that
“the chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God”.
It was at least the third
time the Vatican has issued statements distancing itself from Scalfari’s
articles about the pope, including one in 2014 in which the journalist said the
pontiff had abolished sin.
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