Courtney McGrailThe Holy See has distanced itself from claims that Pope Francis told an Italian journalist that ultimately all divorced Catholics who wish to receive Communion will be enabled to do so.
Writing in La Republicca, veteran reporter Eugenio Scalfari claimed that during a phone conversation the Pontiff asked what he thought of the conclusions of the Synod on the Family. Mr Scalfari responded that he believed the synod’s final report did not appear to have taken account of how the family has changed over the last 50 years.
The Pope agreed that this was true and added “for that matter the family that is the basis of any society changes continuously, as all things change around us”, according to Mr Scalfari.
“We must not think that the family does not exist any longer,” the Holy Father allegedly said, continuing, “it will always exist, because ours is a social species, and the family is the support beam of sociability, but it cannot be avoided that the current family, open as you say, contains some positive aspects and some negative ones.”
Mr Scalfari claimed the Pontiff said while the “diverse opinion of the bishops” reflected the modernity of the Church and the diversity of the societies in which she operates, the bishops nonetheless shared a common goal.
Common principle
The Synod of Bishops, the Pope is reported to have said, had agreed on a common principle with regard to the admission of the divorced to the sacraments. “This is the bottom line result,” he allegedly said, explaining that “the de facto appraisals are entrusted to the confessors, but at the end of faster or slower paths, all the divorced who ask will be admitted”.
Commenting on the report, Holy See spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi said “it is clear that what is being reported by him in the latest article about the divorced and remarried is in no way reliable and cannot be considered as the Pope’s thinking”.
Fr Lombardi said of the 91-year-old atheist and socialist: “As has already occurred in the past, Scalfari refers in quotes to what the Pope supposedly told him, but many times it does not correspond to reality, since he does not record nor transcribe the exact words of the Pope, as he himself has said many times”.