Pope Francis caused a massive controversy during Holy Week.
It happened when he gave one strange interview.
And no one could believe what he said does not exist.
Pope Francis recently spoke with longtime friend Eugenio Scalfari – who is also a leftist atheist.
Scalfari claimed Francis told him Hell doesn’t exist and that souls that are not destined for Heaven just disappear.
CNS News reports:
“In another interview with his longtime atheist friend, Eugenio Scalfari, Pope Francis claims that Hell does not exist and that condemned souls just “disappear.” This is a denial of the 2,000-year-old teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of Hell and the eternal existence of the soul.
The interview between Scalfari and the Pope was published March 28, 2018 in La Repubblica. The relevant section on Hell was translated by the highly respected web log, Rorate Caeli.
The interview is headlined, “The Pope: It is an honor to be called revolutionary.”
Scalfari says to the Pope, “Your Holiness, in our previous meeting you told me that our species will disappear in a certain moment and that God, still out of his creative force, will create new species. You have never spoken to me about the souls who died in sin and will go to hell to suffer it for eternity. You have however spoken to me of good souls, admitted to the contemplation of God. But what about bad souls? Where are they punished?”
Pope Francis says, “They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls.”
This completely flies in the face of the Catholic Church catechism which states that Hell very much exists.
Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins because Hell is a reality.
The Vatican scrambled to respond and released a statement saying this was not a faithful transcription of what Francis really said.
CNS News also reports:
* In a statement released on Mar. 29, after Scalfari’s report garnered worldwide attention, the Vatican said:
“The Holy Father Francis recently received the founder of the newspaper La Repubblica in a private meeting on the occasion of Easter, without however giving him any interviews. What is reported by the author in today’s article [in La Repubblica] is the result of his reconstruction, in which the textual words pronounced by the Pope are not quoted. No quotation of the aforementioned article must therefore be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.”
This could be true.
In 2014, Scalfari was accused of misrepresenting the Pope’s words in an article where Scalfari claimed Francis had abolished sin.
Christians around the world were stunned when just days before Good Friday, an article appeared claiming the Pope does not believe Hell exists.
But it may have been an example of an atheist twisting his words or fabricating a quote.
We will keep you up to date on any new developments in this story.
