Pope Francis is a woefully imprecise man.
He is also badly misrepresented by journalists who seem all too eager to land a big scoop alleging the leader of the Roman Catholic Church has broken with hundreds of years of tradition and orthodoxy, or that he has moved closer to whatever political cause they support at the hour. In fact, media imprecision has become something of a running gag for his papacy.
You would be wise, then, to greet with a heavy amount of skepticism all headlines alleging Francis has unveiled or developed a new line of theology. Chances are high he didn’t actually say what the newspapers claim he said.
Case in point: On Thursday, certain news outlets reported that Francis revealed in a recent interview that he doesn’t believe in the idea of hell.
“Does hell exist?” asked a Newsweek headline. “Pope Francis says no in new interview that could change the Catholic Church forever.”
The British newspaper the Times reported, “Pope Francis ‘abolishes hell’, saying souls of unrepentant sinners will simply disappear.”
The pope supposedly said all of this in an interview with Eugenio Scalfari of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. The 93-year-old Italian journalist reported that Francis said of those who die without eternal salvation that they, “are not punished … There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls.”
This would be an interesting development indeed, considering it doesn’t square with past statements made by Pope Francis. But the bigger problem seems to be that Scalfari misrepresented what Francis actually said. And as others have pointed out, this particular reporter appears to have a very bad habit of doing this.
The Vatican said more specifically Thursday that, “The Holy Father Francis recently received the founder of the daily La Repubblica in a private meeting on the occasion of Easter, but without giving any interview. What is reported by the author in today’s article is the result of his reconstruction, in which the exact words pronounced by the pope are not quoted.”
The statement added, “No quotation in the aforementioned article can therefore be considered a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.”
Right then. This story is most likely nothing more than Scalfari misrepresenting something that was said to him in a private conversation with the pope. Of course, there’s a chance that the pope actually did break with his earlier statements, and the church’s own doctrine, in his talk with Scalfari. But the burden of proof is on a shady journalist, and pardon me if I have my doubts.
