VATICAN CITY
Chiesa
He has unveiled the true program of his pontificate in two interviews and a letter to an atheist intellectual. With respect to the popes who preceded him the separation appears ever more clear. In words and in deeds
by Sandro Magister
ROME, October 3, 2013 – The first meeting, in these days, of the eight cardinals called to consultation by Pope Francis and his visit tomorrow to Assisi, the city of the saint whose name he has taken, are acts that certainly characterize the beginning of this pontificate.
But even more characterizing, in defining its approach, have been four media events of the month just ended:
– the interview of pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio with “La Civiltà Cattolica,”
– his letter in reply to the questions addressed to him publicly by Eugenio Scalfari (in the photo), the founder of the leading secular Italian newspaper, “la Repubblica,”
– his subsequent conversation-interview with Scalfari,
– and another letter in reply to another champion of militant atheism, the mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi, this last written not by the current pope but by his living predecessor.
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