VATICAN CITY
La Repubblica
Dialogue between Francis and Repubblica’s founder, Eugenio Scalfari: “Starting from the Second Vatican Council, open to modern culture”. The conversation in the Vatican after the Pope’s letter to La Repubblica: “Convert you? Proselytism is solemn nonsense. You have to meet people and listen to
by EUGENIO SCALFARI
Pope Francis told me: “The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old. The old need care and companionship; the young need work and hope but have neither one nor the other, and the problem is they don’t even look for them any more. They have been crushed by the present. You tell me: can you live crashed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.”
Your Holiness, I say, it is a largely a political and economic problem for states, governments, political parties, trade unions.
“Yes, you are right, but it also concerns the Church, in fact, particularly the Church because this situation does not hurt only bodies but also souls. The Church must feel responsible for both souls and bodies.”
Your Holiness, you say that the Church must feel responsible. Should I conclude that the Church is not aware of this problem and that you will steer it in this direction?
“To a large extent that awareness is there, but not sufficiently. I want it to be more so. It is not the only problem that we face, but it is the most urgent and the most dramatic.”
The meeting with Pope Francis took place last Tuesday at his home in Santa Marta, in a small bare room with a table and five or six chairs and a painting on the wall. It had been preceded by a phone call I will never forget as long as I live.
It was half past two in the afternoon. My phone rang and in a somewhat shaky voice my secretary tells me: “I have the Pope on the line. I’ll put him through immediately.”
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