God Is Always Near. Pope Francis
a number of accredited journalists travel on the same flight as the pope. The journalist Angela Ambrogetti has taken advantage of this fact to edit a two-volume collection of questions that journalists asked Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI on the plane during their travels. Such documentation is both meaningful and useful.
With the advent of Pope Francis, journalists and non-journalists alike realized right away that the interview could be the form of interaction with the mass media that would be most suited to him, especially if the pope himself had the opportunity to express some of his feelings. This occurred almost immediately on the very first trip when the pope agreed to the journalists’ request to evaluate the trip that he had just made and answered their questions with complete freedom.
This volume brings together, in chronological order, Pope Francis’s first interviews, both those that have been formally recognized and published as such by L’Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Holy See, as well as those published by other publications, with the exception of the interview granted to the journalist, Pablo Calvo, that was published in the Sunday supplement of Clarín on July 27, 2014.
The first three interviews took place during the trip to Brazil for World Youth Day.
Father Antonio Spadaro, S.J., the editor in chief of the journal La Civiltà Cattolica, conducted the fourth interview. Discreetly, and to the great surprise of many journalists, Father Spadaro was able to edit—based on over six hours of dialogue—a work which he has described in the following words: “Our time together was, in truth, more a conversation than an interview, and my questions simply served to guide the discussion in a general sense, rather than enclose it within rigid and predefined parameters.” Emphasizing content more than form, the interview, which was also published in a separate volume, revealed and highlighted some less known aspects of Pope Francis’s personality, especially regarding the religious dimension.
Included in this volume are the two interviews conducted by the former editor in chief of La Repubblica, Eugenio Scalfari. Published respectively on October 1, 2013, and July 13, 2014, they created somewhat of an “uproar,” so much so that the director of the Vatican Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi, S.J., presented the following note of clarification on Vatican Radio:
In the Sunday edition of La Repubblica, an article by Eugenio Scalfari was prominently featured relating a recent conversation that took place with Pope Francis. The conversation was very cordial and most interesting, and touched principally upon the themes of the plague of sexual abuse of minors and the Church’s attitude toward the Mafia.
However, as it occurred in a previous and similar circumstance, it is important to note that the words “in quotations” that Mr. Scalfari attributes to the pope come from the expert journalist Scalfari’s own memory of what the pope said and are not an exact transcription of a recording nor a review of such a transcript by the pope himself to whom the words are attributed.
We should not or must not, therefore, speak in any way, shape, or form of an interview in the normal use of the word, as if there had been a series of questions and answers that faithfully and exactly reflect the precise thoughts of the one being interviewed.
It is safe to say, however, that the overall theme of the article captures the spirit of the conversation between the Holy Father and Mr. Scalfari, while, at the same time, strongly restating what was said about the previous “interview” that appeared in La Repubblica: the individual expressions that were used and the manner in which they have been reported cannot be safely attributed to the pope.
Let me state two particular examples. We must take into consideration two affirmations that have drawn much attention and that are not attributed to the pope. The first is that there are also “some cardinals” among pedophiles, and the second regarding celibacy: “I will find solutions.”
In the article published in La Repubblica, these two affirmations are clearly attributed to the pope but—curiously—were opened with quotation marks at the beginning but were not closed with them at the end. We must ask ourselves why the final quotation marks are not present. Is this an oversight or explicit recognition that this is an attempt to manipulate some naive readers?
In addition to these interviews, Andrea Tornielli, a reporter with La Stampa in Turin and an old acquaintance of Jorge Bergoglio, did an interview for La Stampa that focused on the meaning of Christmas, delving in depth at the same time on other issues such as a pastoral approach toward divorced people as well as the significance of the relationship between Church and politics.
A year after his election as pope, another interview was granted to Ferruccio de Bortoli, editor in chief of Corriere della Sera. It was conducted with a high degree of professionalism and attention to general themes, an assessment of sorts of the first year of his pontificate, and was also published separately in book form by Bompiani.
Of particular pastoral significance, especially vis-à-vis a pastoral approach for youth ministry, is the interview that the pope gave to a group from Belgium.
The collection is completed with a press conference that was given on the return flight from the Holy Land (May 26, 2014), an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia (June 12, 2014), as well as the interview with Franca Giansoldati, a journalist with Il Messaggero of Rome. The volume ends with the press conference on the flight back from Pope Francis’s trip to Korea (August 18, 2014).
These interviews, as a whole, reveal the richness of Pope Francis’s message: his attention to children, to young people, and to the elderly; God’s mercy and tenderness; his passion for people; his emphasis on encounter and interreligious dialogue. They also reveal his great attachment to Pope Paul VI as well as his ability to encounter God in everyday life and through simple and spontaneous prayer.
His desire is to appear as, and to be, a genuine person. “To depict the pope as some sort of ‘superman,’ some sort of ‘superstar,’ seems offensive to me,” he told de Bortoli. “The pope is a man who laughs, cries, is at peace with the world, and has friends like everyone else. A normal person!”
—Giuseppe Costa, S.D.B.
Note: Introductions for each chapter have been provided by Matthew Bunson, Our Sunday Visitor Senior Correspondent.
Chapter One
The Flight from Rome to Rio de Janeiro
Pope Francis’s Meeting with Journalists
Monday, July 22, 2013
The first press conference by Pope Francis after his election in March 2013 was held, fittingly, on the first major apostolic journey of the then young pontificate. The pope was introduced to the press corps that would be accompanying him on most of his trips. Notably, Francis left the journalists with little expectation of lengthy subsequent interviews on papal flights as he felt they required “quite an effort to do so.” Given the flurry of interviews and press conferences that followed, Pope Francis clearly found both his voice and energy.
This first press conference also included several themes that the pope has subsequently developed, including building what he calls a “culture of encounter,” the dangers of a “throwaway culture,” and the problems facing young people in the modern world ranging from unemployment to hopelessness to exploitation.
Father Federico Lombardi
Pope Francis, we welcome you to this in-flight community of journalists and communications workers. We’re very excited to be accompanying you on your first intercontinental and international journey, after having followed you with deep emotion on your trip to Lampedusa! Among other things, this is your first trip to your very own continent—to the end of the world. This trip is to visit young people. For this reason, there is great interest in it. As you can see, we have filled up all the available places for journalists on this flight. There are over seventy of us, and the group