(ZENIT News / Rome, 14.01.2014).- On Sunday night, January 14, Pope Francis took part in the Italian television program “Che Tempo Che Fa” [idiom: what’s happening or what’s happened in society], in which the Presenter, Fabio Fazio, asked him some questions on topics such as God’s forgiveness, how God corrects, his [Francis’]renunciation (a recurrent question to which, once again, the Pope said he will not renounce), war, the arms trade, migrants, his trips to Polynesia and Argentina, God’s face, what makes him [Francis] laugh, why he always asks for prayers, and the most urgent reforms facing the Church.
One of the current topics of general interest is the document Fiducia Supplicans, on the pastoral blessings of irregular couples.
Speaking of the latter, the Pope said for the first time publicly:
When it comes to taking a decision, there is a price of loneliness you have to pay, and sometimes the decisions aren’t accepted, it’s because you don’t know. I say that when you don’t like this decision go and talk and express your doubts and have a fraternal discussion and so something goes. The danger is that I don’t like it and I nail it in my heart and then I resist and come to bad conclusions. This has happened with these last decisions on the blessing of all.
The Pontiff also said:
The Lord blesses everyone, everyone who comes. The Lord blesses all that are capable of being baptized, namely, every person. But then the persons must enter in conversation about the Lord’s blessings and see what path the Lord proposes to them. Bu they must be taken by the hand and helped to follow that path, not condemn them from the start. And this is the pastoral work of the Church. It’s a very important work for confessors. I always say to confessors: forgive everything and treat people very kindly, as the Lord treats us, and then, if you want to help people, you can always talk with them and help them go forward, but forgive everyone.
In the 54 years that I am — this is a confession — 54 years that I am a priest, I’m old! In these 54 years only once did I deny forgiveness, because of the person’s hypocrisy — only once. I’ve always forgiven everything, but I will also say with the knowledge that that person, perhaps, will fall again, but the Lord forgives us, He helps us not to fall again, or to fall less, but always forgive.
A great confessor, whom I made a Cardinal in the last Consistory — he is a 94-year-old man, a Capuchin friar of Argentina — and he is a great pardoner, as we say, ‘manga ancha,[idiom: to be too lenient] ’he forgives everything. And once he came to the Episcopal Palace, when I was Archbishop there, and he said to me: ‘Listen, Jorge, I have this problem, I forgive too much, and sometimes I have the sensation that I don’t feel well’ [about it] — And what do you do, Luis? [I asked him]. I go to the chapel and ask the Lord to forgive me: ‘Lord, forgive me, I’ve forgiven too much – But you were the One who gave me the bad example!’ It’s true, we must forgive everything because He has forgiven us. He has given us this “bad example.”
It was the first time the Pope spoke publicly about Fiducia Supplicans.
Responding to another interesting question, one on the most urgent reforms facing the Church, Pope Francis answered:
The reform of the heart of all Christians. Structures must be preserved, changed, reformed in keeping with their end. And this –I dare to say — can be something mechanical — in the good sense of the term –, but structures must be updated always, let’s use this positive word: change to update. However, the heart must be reformed every day: the heart must be changed. And this is an endeavour of every day. When we feel some evil in the heart – envy, for example –, envy, which is that “yellow” vice, I like to call it, it’s a “yellows “ vice that ruins all relationships. And we must repent and change our heart constantly. And be careful: what happens in my heart must change — change the heart and then change the structures. The structures must be changed because history goes on. The things that were good in the last century, are not so now. But true freedom is to change them, because they’re not absolute things in themselves; they are things relative to the historical moment.
