VATICAN CITY
The Vatican said the latest published interview with Pope Francis, in which he says fighting sex abuse and the mafia will be priorities of his pontificate, should not be considered a record of his exact words.
According to the article, published July 13 in the Rome daily La Repubblica, the pope also spoke about failings of the modern family, the nature of divine forgiveness and possible changes to the discipline of priestly celibacy.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, promptly released a statement confirming that the article “captures the spirit of the conversation” between Pope Francis and journalist Eugenio Scalfari, but cautioning that the “individual expressions that were used and the manner in which they have been reported cannot be attributed to the pope.”
Suggesting that the “naive reader is being manipulated” by certain portions of the article, Father Lombardi expressed particular skepticism about two statements attributed to Pope Francis: a claim that some cardinals have been guilty of sexually abusing children, and a vow to “find solutions” to the “problem” of priestly celibacy.
According to Scalfari, the article was based on his third private conversation with the pope, an hourlong meeting at the pope’s Vatican residence July 10.
Scalfari’s first meeting with the pope, last September, was the basis for an Oct. 1 article that quoted Pope Francis saying he had considered turning down the papacy in the moments after his March 2013 election.
That article was republished in the Vatican newspaper but was later removed from the paper’s website after doubts were raised over its accuracy. Father Lombardi explained it “should be considered faithful on the whole to the mind of the pope, but not necessarily in its particular words and the accuracy of its details.”
Scalfari himself later told reporters that his quotations of the pope were based on memory, not notes or a tape recording.
The men’s dialogue began when Scalfari, an avowed atheist, publicly addressed the pope in a pair of articles on religious and philosophical topics over the summer of 2013, and the pope replied in a letter that La Repubblica published last September.
In their latest meeting, Scalfari writes, Pope Francis said “reliable data” indicate 2 percent of Catholic priests are guilty of sexually abusing children.
“This statistic ought to reassure me, but I must say it doesn’t reassure me at all,” the pope reportedly said, three days after his first meeting with a group of sex abuse survivors. “The 2 percent who are pedophiles are priests and even bishops and cardinals. And others, even more numerous, know but keep quiet, punish but do not say why. I find this state of affairs unsustainable and it is my intention to address it with the severity it deserves.”
Pope Francis noted that a large proportion of sex abuse cases take place in the home.
