In a wide-ranging interview for 16 Jesuit publications around the world, including America magazine in the United States, Pope Francis once again has waded into hot-button questions such as homosexuality, abortion and the role of women, not breaking with traditional doctrine but trying to shift the church’s emphasis from condemnation to mercy.
“The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules,” Francis says. “Ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all.”
The pope also warns against a “restorationist” mentality in Catholicism and insists that “thinking with the church” cannot mean solely thinking with the hierarchy. Francis also pointedly says, “I have never been a right-winger.”
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(III) John Allen of NC Reporter–Pope rejects church of 'small-minded rules' in Jesuit interview
In a wide-ranging interview for 16 Jesuit publications around the world, including America magazine in the United States, Pope Francis once again has waded into hot-button questions such as homosexuality, abortion and the role of women, not breaking with traditional doctrine but trying to shift the church’s emphasis from condemnation to mercy.
“The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules,” Francis says. “Ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all.”
The pope also warns against a “restorationist” mentality in Catholicism and insists that “thinking with the church” cannot mean solely thinking with the hierarchy. Francis also pointedly says, “I have never been a right-winger.”
Read it all.