Pope Francis' Vision for the Church: As Relayed to an Atheist

by Paul Simmons

On the sixth month of his pontificate, Pope Francis rocked the Catholic world with a series of landmark interviews granted to Eugenio Scalfari - the atheist editor and founder of the historically rabid, anti-Catholic Italian publication entitled “La Repubblica”. Pope Francis initially submitted a letter to Scalfari on September 11, 2013, which was followed up with a face-to-face interview on October 1, 2013.

The atheist Scalfari, historically critical of the papacy and the Catholic Church, at the end of the interview, gushed: “This is Pope Francis. If the Church becomes what he imagines and desires, it will mean the changing of an era.”

The interview, upon closer inspection, is a concise summary of Pope Francis’ all-encompassing vision for the Catholic Church. While conservative Catholic publications voiced their concerns with many of the points raised in the interview, much of the secular media have nothing but rave reviews of Pope Francis’ new vision for the Church.

This vision, as we shall see subsequently in this article, is a stark departure from the line of previous pontiffs. Scalfari summarised some of the “innovations”, as he calls it, of the new pontiff that have won over hearts of the secular media:"His mission contains two scandalous innovations: the poor Church of Francis, the horizontal Church of Martini. And a third: a God who does not judge, but forgives. There is no damnation, there is no hell."

After much controversy, the full text of the interview was taken off from the official Vatican website, after initially being published in full.

So what did the pope have to say in the interview? In this article we tackle some of most important points, as well as a personal opinion and analysis of this author regarding these points.