Translation of Eugenio Scalfari’s ‘Latest Interview’

A quick working translation of the latest article “interview” article by Eugenio Scalfari in La Repubblica.

Note Scalfari is not referring to a recent encounter with the Pope. Instead, these are a few memories and ruminations stitched together by the nonagenarian atheist and former newspaper editor. The most controversial statements are in bold.

The Vatican has said the words Scalfari attributes to the Pope “can’t be considered a faithful account of what was actually said, but rather a personal and free interpretation of what he heard, as appears completely evident from what is written today regarding the divinity of Jesus Christ.”

Oct. 10: “The Holy Father never said what Scalfari wrote,” Vatican communications head Paolo Ruffini said at a press conference, adding that “both the quoted remarks and the free reconstruction and interpretation by Dr. Scalfari of the conversations, which go back to more than two years ago, cannot be considered a faithful account of what was said by the pope.”

“That will be found rather throughout the Church’s magisterium and Pope Francis’ own, on Jesus: true God and true man,” Ruffini added.

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Francis and the Spirit of the Amazon

His Holiness Pope Francis has convened a synod in which more than two hundred cardinals and archbishops are taking part to deal with the problem of the Amazon.

The theme is of fundamental importance for the whole of humanity.

Francis has been launching the idea of the One God for years now.

It is obviously a revolutionary idea that involves the examination of a serious problem that affects everyone, rich and culturally evolved peoples as well as poor and desperate peoples.

The unification lies in the fact that there is an interior community: everyone must live and everyone should do so, one helping the other which in turn should adequately correspond. Rich and poor, men and women: this is our world of humans and this is what the Pope continually considers. “We have come to contemplate, to understand, to serve the people.” In this way, Pope Francis opened the work of the Synod.

The Amazon is a very serious case but it represents the history of the human race, for six years now Francis has been pointing the finger at this dramatic theme

It begins from the first page: “We have not come here to invent programs of social development or be guardians of cultures. This is not our task or at least not the main one” were the words of Francis. “Our work will be first of all to pray and then to reflect, to dialogue, to listen with humility and to speak with courage. We do not need to demonstrate our possible power in the media. This would constitute a sensationalist Church, but this is not what we conceive, we know that humans are all a part of the world in their external diversity”. Pope Francis never spoke of the “I” as the determining element of man.

Those who have had, as I have had many times, the good fortune to meet him and speak to him with the greatest cultural confidence, know that Pope Francis conceives Christ as Jesus of Nazareth, man, not God incarnate. Once incarnated, Jesus ceases to be a God and becomes a man until his death on the cross. The proof that confirms this reality and that creates a Church completely different from the others is proved by some episodes that deserve to be recalled. The first is what happens in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus goes after the Last Supper. The apostles who are just a few meters from him hear him pray to God in words that were once reported by Simon Peter: “Lord,” said Jesus, “if you can take this bitter cup away from me, please do so, but if you can’t or won’t, I will drink it to the end.” He was arrested by Pilate’s guards as soon as he left that garden. Another episode, also well known, occurs when Jesus is already crucified and there again repeats and is heard by the apostles and women who are kneeling at the foot of the cross: “Lord, you have forsaken me”.

When I happened to discuss these phrases, Pope Francis told me: “They are the proof that Jesus of Nazareth, once he became man, even if he were a man of exceptional virtue, was not a God at all”.

I remember these events that allowed me to meet Pope Francis several times, to discuss with him themes and problems that concern the history of humanity as a whole, but above all that closest to us from the Enlightenment to the end of our days. Pope Francis wanted to have an unscrupulous image of modern culture and he asked me to point it out to him and to examine it.

These talks were all and always reported literally in our newspaper and that is why today I feel the need to remember them, because Francis addresses the theme of ‘Amazonia but broadens the scope and comes to the conclusion that men are substantially all equal and all different. This is the trait that differentiates us from the animal genus to which we belong, we are also endowed with instincts but we do not limit ourselves to these: we have feelings. They can be good or bad, selfish or altruistic; our body and our vital organs develop these moral diversities and create a precious yet completely incorporeal organ that is our Mind. This is the reason why I have once again recalled the interests of Francis in the corporeal and spiritual knowledge of man.

He loves culture and wants to know modern society as much as possible for the obvious reason that even the Church he leads must acquire modernity in its highest part, which best contributes to a humanity that makes our existence worth living.