In interview, Pope says criticism is boring, but can be helpful

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Public criticism of cardinals and bishops is annoying – ‘like a rash that bothers you a bit,’ Pope Francis has said – but differences should be voiced and criticism can be helpful, he told the ‘Associated Press.

“You prefer that they not criticize, for the sake of peace,” he said in the interview conducted on January 24 and published the following day. “But I prefer that they do because it means there is freedom to speak.”

The papacy is not a dictatorship, he said, and, moreover, “criticism helps you grow and make things better.”

The AP interview with the pope also covered topics ranging from his health to the ongoing crisis of clergy and homosexuality sexual abuse to potential policies regulating the retirement of a pope who resigns his office. .

Pope Francis has said he had no role in lifting the 2020 excommunication of Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik, a Slovenian priest and artist, who continues to impose restrictions on his ministry after additional accusations of sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse of women in a religious order he aided. begin.

And while he said he always orders the statute of limitations lifted when a case involves someone who was a child at the time of the abuse, he doesn’t when the survivors were adults because justice demands respect for the idea that a person is innocent until guilty and that crimes must be prosecuted within a certain time.

In discussing homosexuality, Pope Francis said that “being homosexual is not a crime. It is not a crime. And he defined as “unfair” laws that criminalize homosexuality or homosexual activity.

According to Church teaching, homosexual activity is a sin, the pope said, but, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, homosexuals should be respected and welcomed and not marginalized or discriminated against.

“We are all children of God, and God loves us as we are and for the strength that each of us fights for our dignity,” the pope said.

Being gay “is not a crime”, he said. You could say, “’Yes, but it’s a sin.’ All right, but first let’s distinguish between a sin and a crime.

“It is also a sin to lack charity towards one another,” he added.

In the days following the death of Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Georg Gnswein, the late Pope’s secretary, published a book containing criticisms of Pope Francis, particularly because of his treatment of Archbishop Gnswein, but also because of his decision to limit Mass celebrations using the pre-Vatican II liturgy.

Then, shortly after the death of Australian Cardinal George Pell on January 10, two texts attributed to him and critical of the pope – one calling his papacy a “catastrophe” – were revealed.

“Even if they say he criticized me, okay he has the right,” the pope said when asked about Cardinal Pell. “Criticism is a human right.”

At the same time, he says, the cardinal “was a terrific guy. Brilliant,” and he did a lot to start the process of reforming Vatican finances.

Pope Francis has argued against the idea that criticism has increased since the death of Pope Benedict and that it is somehow linked to the fact that the late pope is no longer around for silence the critics.

Instead, he said, it seems like a natural part of the “wear and tear” of his papacy, which is approaching its 10th anniversary. In the early years, he says, everything was new and exciting, but the critics started “when they started seeing my flaws and didn’t like them.”

As he did shortly before the death of Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis also told AP that he had no intention of issuing standards for how a retired pope should live. and dress and what it should be called.

But, he said, if he were ever to resign, he would insist on being appointed bishop emeritus of Rome and he would live in a diocesan residence in Rome for retired priests.

Pope Francis insisted he was “in good health”, at least “normal” for his age, which is 86. His knee healed, he said, but he told AP he was again suffering from diverticulosis or bulges in his intestinal wall. , a condition for which he underwent surgery in 2021.

In the wake of the publication of a letter from senior Vatican officials criticizing the plan of the German Catholic “Synodal Way” to create a “Synodal Council” of bishops and laity to deal with national issues facing the Church, the ‘AP asked the pope about his view of the German synodal process, which began in 2019. The process focused on four areas that a major study identified as containing the ‘systemic causes’ of sexual abuse and its cover-up : the exercise of power in the church; sexual morality; priestly existence; and the role of women in the church.

But Pope Francis told AP that the German process appeared to be “elitist” because it mainly involved bishops, theologians and lay people invited to participate by the country’s bishops’ conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics. And, he said, it could become “ideological,” which is dangerous because “when ideology gets involved in church processes, the Holy Spirit comes home.”

Tags: Review

Category: US and World News

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