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Pope Francis interview with the TV program “Che tempo che fa” (What’s the weather like”)
He was interviewed by by Fabio Fazio on the Italian channel Nove (nine) on Sunday, 14th January 2024
“The Lord blesses everyone, everyone, everyone.”
God is good and blesses everyone
Pope Francis spoke on Sunday evening, Jan. 14, on Che tempo che fa, a program of Italian television station Nove, and in dialogue with Fabio Fazio spoke for the first time in public about Fiducia supplicans, the Declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on blessings to irregular couples, a text that has sparked much discussion in recent weeks.
Francis responded to a question about the controversy and said, “At the time of making a decision, there is a price of loneliness that you have to pay and sometimes decisions are not accepted, but most of the time, when decisions are not accepted, it is because you don’t know. I say, when you don’t like this decision go and talk and say your doubts and carry on a fraternal discussion and that’s how something goes on. The danger is that I don’t like it and I put it in my heart and so I become with a resistance and make bad conclusions.
This has happened with these latest decisions about blessing everyone.”
“Holding hands and helping”
So the Pope added, “The Lord blesses everyone, everyone, who comes.
The Lord blesses everyone who is capable of being baptized, that is, every person.
But then people must enter into conversation with the Lord’s blessing and see what is the path that the Lord proposes to them.
But we have to take them by the hand and help them go down that road, not condemn them from the beginning.
And this is the pastoral work of the Church. This is a very important work for confessors.
I always say to confessors: you forgive everything and treat people very kindly as the Lord treats us.
Then if you want to help people, then you can talk, always bring them forward and help them move forward, but forgive everyone.
In the 54 years that I have – this is a confession -In the 54 years that I am a priest, I am old!
In these 54 years I have only denied forgiveness once, because of the hypocrisy of the person.
Once. Always I have forgiven everything. but I will say with the knowledge that that person maybe will relapse but the Lord forgives us, help not to relapse, or to relapse less, but always forgive.
A great confessor, whom I made a cardinal in the last Consistory, is a 94-year-old man, a Capuchin friar from Argentina. And he is a great forgiver, as we say, “wide sleeve,” he forgives everything.
And once he came to the episcope when I was archbishop there and he said, “Look Giorgio, I have this problem/ I forgive too much and sometimes I get the feeling that it is not good.” –
And what do you do Luigi? – I go to the chapel and ask the Lord for forgiveness: Lord forgive me, I have forgiven too much. But it was you (Jesus) who gave me the bad example!”
This is true we must forgive everything because He has forgiven us.
He has given us this ‘bad example’.”
“All in, all at home.”
Francis said again in the interview, ” The Church has this cordial dimension: that it comes from the heart, everyone, everyone at home, everyone inside. The Lord says it, that parable of the Lord I like so much, when the guests at the Son’s wedding did not come because each one had his own interests, what does the Lord say to his helpers: ‘Go to the crossroads and bring everyone, good and bad, healthy and sick, young and old…’
Everyone, everyone, everyone. Everyone inside. This is the Lord’s invitation.
And everyone with his own burden, because everyone has his own and the Lord says, “Everyone.”
This is what the Lord says, not what I say.
The problem is when we make selections: this one yes, this one no…. Do Him. Not everyone.
Then inside we see.”
God does not tire of forgiveness
“Forgiveness is for everyone,” Francis said again in the interview with Fabio Fazio.
“Something I like, and something a very wise, a simple person once told me: ‘God does not get tired of forgiveness, ever.’ God always forgives because forgiveness comes from Him, but we are the ones who get tired of asking for forgiveness. And that is the problem. The heart that is open to forgiveness is immediately taken up by the heart of Jesus who forgives everything, forgives everything, but the hardened heart of ours becomes unable to ask for forgiveness and that is a very bad thing, the inability to ask for forgiveness is a bad thing. And from there comes a certain inability to be forgiven, but not because the Lord does not forgive, no, he forgives everything.
In that he is a “fool of love,” let’s say. But we, we are the ones who get tired of asking for forgiveness and sometimes the Lord waits, knocks on the door of so many hearts so that they have this ability to recognize the evil they are doing.
Think of these weapons manufacturers, who are manufacturers of death.
The Lord is close to them, touching their hearts to bring them to a change of life, and the Lord is not tired of forgiving. Let us remember this. God never tires of forgiving. We are the ones who get tired of asking for forgiveness. Never forget this.
“The Lord corrects with love” – “drawing near to the Lord” and “letting the Lord draw near.”
Francis in the interview with Che tempo che fa then spoke of the two directions, that of “drawing near to the Lord” and that of “letting the Lord draw near.”
“Sometimes, because of circumstances, because of war for example, we have anger in our hearts and we lash out at the Lord: ‘But why do you allow these things, why do you let us destroy ourselves like this?’
But the Lord is near. And we, the true way, even crying out our sorrow like this, is to let the Lord come near. And let us not forget this: sometimes we are presented with the Lord as the relentless judge….
He is judge, it is true. But He is near, compassionate and merciful, that is the Lord.
He is not the God who is eager to punish, as the Bible always presents him.
The problem is that we are afraid to ask for forgiveness.”
Speaking of chastisements, the Pope explained that God’s chastisement is the punishment of father and mother with their child, when they give him some chastisement, some penance to correct him.
Let’s say, the Lord chastises to correct, chastises with love.
It’s a mom or dad when they give something to a child “boom boom” [mimics with voice a gesture], if it’s a nice dad or a nice mom, his hand hurts more, he has more pain in his hands than pain in his butt, it’s like that. Woe to the daddy and the mommy who don’t feel pain when they pat the child a little bit, something is wrong there.”
Francis then remarked about the phrase in the Act of Pain that reads “because by sinning I have deserved your chastisements,” “If a person does a bad thing the judge puts him in jail.
Bad things should be chastised. But that is too harsh an expression of God’s love.
I like better to say, “because by sinning I have saddened your heart.” I like this better.
Because God’s heart is also a human heart, He became man, and He is saddened when He sees our hardness of heart, our plan to go on with our selfishness….
But a beautiful thing that I like to think, that God chastises us by caressing, because He puts us in difficulty of life because we think the bad things we have done and change our lives.
He cares about changing lives, He is the great forgiver, He doesn’t get tired of forgiving.
“And how many times do I have to forgive?” – 80 times? – Always – 8? 80? 800 times? Always.”
Because the Lord says we have to forgive like that because He is like that, He always forgives,
He doesn’t get tired of forgiving.”
“I am not thinking about resignation.”
Asked by Fazio about his health and possible resignation, Pope Francis responded as follows, “It is neither a thought nor a concern or even a desire. It is a possibility, open, to all Popes, but for the moment it is not at the center of my thoughts and my anxieties, my feelings. In the time that I feel with capacity to serve I go on. When I can’t do it anymore it will be time to think about it.”
I am afraid of war escalation
“This war escalation scares me, because this bringing forward warlike steps in the world, one wonders how we will end up. With atomic weapons now, destroying everything. How are we going to end up. Like Noah’s Ark? That’s scary to me. The capacity for self-destruction that humanity has today.”
The Pope then said, “It is difficult to make peace, I don’t know why there is something self-destructive inside. When I went to Redipuglia in 2014, I saw the result of that massacre, and I cried. I cried. Every November 1 I go to a cemetery to celebrate. When I went to Anzio, it was the boys who went in [the Pope is referring to the young soldiers who died during the landing, ed.], of little age, all dead. Last time I went to the British cemetery, I was looking at the ages. And I was thinking about the mothers, who get that letter, “Madam, I have the honor to say that you have a son. He was a ….” And the mom hears “Hero” , and she says: “No, I want the son not the hero” They lose the children… And we think what a war means. Let’s think about the Normandy landings…. Twenty thousand boys were left on the beach!
This is the war. This is the war. We have to think about it.”
“We must cling to hope.”
Francis then noted, “Hope is like the force that carries us forward. Hope does not disappoint”.
There was Turandot that said it disappoints. No: now hope does not disappoint, never disappoints.
And we must cling to hope. Hope — the image, the beautiful thing about hope — is the anchor, that you throw it out and go forward, clinging to the rope to get to the beach.
This anchor, which is the image of hope, never disappoints.
But it is we who manufacture disappointments – so many – that are criminal.
Every day I communicate by phone with the parish in Gaza, and they tell me the things that are happening…. Terrible that… How many dead Arabs there, and how many dead Israelis.
Two peoples called to be brothers, self-destructing each other.
That is war: destroying. We have to think about that.”
War and the arms trade
Pope Francis said in the interview with Fabio Fazio, “War began at the beginning of the biblical account of Creation. Cain and Abel. It began the enmity, the war crime…. Then, in history, always there have been wars.
But war is a selfish option, which has this gesture: take for me.
In contrast, peace has the opposite gesture: give and take.
It is true that it is risky to make peace, but war is riskier, more risky.
We see the two wars that are close now.
But think, from when World War II ended to now-I said it-no wars have ended.
Now, two wars that, because they are close to us, we feel them more: the Ukraine-Russia wars, and the Palestine-Israel war.
How come peace cannot be made. Behind the wars-let’s say it with some shame, but let’s say it-there is the arms trade. An economist was telling me that, right now, the investments that give the most interest, the most money, are the arms factories. Investing to kill. This is a reality-this is a reality.”
What moves the powerful to war?
Speaking about the motivations of the powerful who decide to start conflicts, Francis said, “I think it is difficult to express a general motivation. Some a sense of patriotism, in others an economic interest, in others making an empire and going forward: the power of domination.
Everyone has their own motivations, but wars are to destroy, always.
Look at the images of wars now, look at the image of the Gaza Strip, look at the image of Crimea or Ukraine, look at the image. It instructs.
An experience I had a short time ago-a couple of years –
I went on a visit to a European country and I had to go from one town to another by helicopter but that day it was foggy and I had to do it by car, two hours by car.
People in the villages knew because of the radio and waited for me to come by.
Curious: there were little boys and girls, young couples, middle-aged couples, but of a certain age there were grandmothers, old ladies, rarely any old people….
What does this mean? War. These men have not reached old age. War is like this: it destroys, it kills.”
Children, the great discarded, the greatest exploited
Talking about the children with the interviewer, the Pope said, “Last Wednesday a delegation of children from Ukraine came, they saw something of the war and, I say one thing Fabio, none of them smiled.
Children spontaneously smile, I used to give them chocolates and they did not smile.
They had forgotten the smile, and for a child to forget the smile is criminal.
This is what war does: it prevents one from dreaming.”
Pope Francis added, “Children are the great exploited, the great discarded.
And we forget that they are the future . But we take the future away from the child.
Then when it comes, at 20, 22, 23 years old and ends up in prison, we say, ‘But, this dirty generation, look at the things they do….‘ It was us! It was society that educated them like that, no because it told them, “You must kill, you must steal….” No. But it has put them in a condition, on the edge of society and they feel discarded and live as discarded and do things that discard them. It is terrible. This is a death sentence for children.
In June, the first world meeting of children will be held here in Rome. A little bit for that, to get attention. When we had the children’s meeting there were 7,500 from all over the world, countries of peace and war. Now there will be another one. But this, a first world meeting, to help draw attention that children are the future but they are the future with the things we will give them.
Either we will raise them well or we will raise them badly.”
Evil from the heart
the Pope explained in the interview, “Evil comes from one’s heart, always, we have a choice: either good or evil. The heart has capacity to do evil, from the beginning. Think of the quarrel of the brothers, Cain and Abel. We have that possibility. And then all the wars that followed. From the heart. The heart has the ability to do good and evil, and here it roots the fact of one’s freedom.
Man is free. It is true that many times he is conditioned by social political issues-we have talked about conditioned children-but the heart of man is free, and when a head of state decides to wage a war, he does so-usually an offensive war not a defensive war-he does so with freedom. And then, let’s not forget, I repeat, that the trade perhaps that gives the most today is the arms trade, the weapons trade. And a lot of times wars go on, they get wider to sell weapons or try new weapons, and people dying is kind of the price you pay to try new weapons or trade the staff of weapons that I have.”
The most urgent reform for the Church
The most urgent reform
Responding to Fazio’s question about what is the most urgent reform for the Church, the Pope said, “The reform of hearts, for all Christians. The Structures must be preserved, changed, reformed according to their purpose.
And this I – dare I say – that also can be a mechanical thing – in the good sense of the word – but structures must always be updated, let’s use this positive word: updated.
But the heart must be reformed every day: changing the heart.
And this is an everyday work.
When we feel some badness in our hearts, envy for example, envy that is that “yellow” vice — I like to call it — it is a “yellow” vice that ruins all relationships.
We have to repent and change the heart continually.
And be careful: what happens in my heart to change?
Changing the heart and then changing the structures.
The Structures must be changed because history moves forward.
Things that were good in the last century are not good now.
But the true freedom is is changing them, because they are not absolute things in themselves, they are things relative to the historical moment.”
The cruelties suffered by migrants
Francis then returned to the topic of migrants. He said: “There is so much cruelty in treating these migrants, from the moment they leave their home until they arrive here in Europe.
There is a very nice book – very nice – it’s tiny, it’s read in a few hours – it’s called Little Brother.
The original Spanish is Hermanito. Little Brother. A migrant wrote it, who spent three years coming from Guinea to Spain. And he wrote about these three years of slavery, the suffering, the torture.
This is what people who are taken by this mafia, who exploit them, do.
He came to see me the other day-because he works in Spain now-to thank me that I had talked about his book. But a whole life like Pato’s, who lost his wife and daughter, and so many others….
The other day, there was a case of a person who was tortured, but the thugs had demanded a big sum to let him go free. That’s how it happens on the Libyan coast. And thank God we found the benefactor who paid, and he came. Migrants are treated as things so many times. I think of the tragedy in Cutro, there in front, drowned to repel. It is true that everyone has the right to stay in their home and to migrate.
It is true that right now in Europe there are five countries receiving the most migrants: Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Italy and Spain. Please don’t close the doors. Also some of these countries are not having children, and they need labor. There are empty villages in some of these countries.
A beautiful, well thought out migration policy also helps developed countries like Italy, Spain, etc.
We need to take the problem of migrants in hand, take away all these mafias that exploit migrants, and move forward in solving the problem of both the need for people in countries and migration.
Migrating is one right and staying in the country is another right. Respect both.
A very important politician, head of government, of Europe once said, “The problem of African migration is solved in Africa.“ Help develop Africa so that they don’t have the need to come.
The migrant problem is very important.
If you have some time read this book – Little Brother – it is the hard history of migration.”
Why I ask for prayers
When asked by Fabio Fazio why he always asks for prayers for him, the Pope replied,
“Because I am a sinner, and I need God’s help to remain faithful to the vocation He has given me.
Everyone has his own vocation, you have yours-you do so well with your profession, which comes from a vocation of the heart! – Everyone has their own, their own vocation, which they must carry out.
The Lord has called me to be a priest, to be a bishop, and, as a bishop, I have a very great responsibility to the Church. And I know my weaknesses. And for that I have to ask for prayers from everyone, that they pray for me that I remain faithful in the Lord’s service. That I don’t end up in an attitude of a mediocre shepherd who doesn’t take care of the fold, but a shepherd in the midst of the flock, to smell the flock and to know.
The pope must know what the flock is like. Shepherd behind the flock, to help, to go ahead, and sometimes to let the flock, with sniffing, look for new meals. And shepherd in front of the flock to lead. And for that I need prayer.
And for that I ask for prayer, that I may not fail to be a shepherd. The Lord has called us, called pastors to be shepherds of the people, and — I like to say — not “cleric of state,” not a monsieur l’Abbé de l’Ecole française.”
From God one can ask everything. Francis said, “one can ask everything from the Lord. In this asking, I think we are sometimes just shy, we do not have the courage to ask everything of the Lord. W
hat does the Lord say in the Gospel, ‘Ask and you shall have.’ Ask. Ask.
This is the Christian wisdom of learning – to knock on the door of God’s heart.”
The image of God’s face
The pontiff said he uses “images of the Gospel in his prayers.
I like to imagine him as the generous dad, who receives his son who has gone away and spent a fortune, and comes back wounded…he receives him.
And, the Gospel says, that the son “had prepared the speech,”
“Dad I have sinned against Heaven, against you…”
But Dad, with a hug, almost did not let him speak.
I like to think of the Lord with this hug.
When I go and say, “But, I have failed in this…” I like to think of him, with his hand he does this to me, and he says, “But go on, go on, keep going.”
It is the Lord who pushes us forward, who is not scandalized by our sins, because He is Father, and He goes with us. He takes it for granted that we are sinners. The problem is His: whether I accompany the sinner or send him to hell right away. And He chooses to accompany us. And that is why He sent His Son, to accompany us. The Lord sent His Son to the world not to condemn the world, but to save it.
So says the Liturgy.” And about Hell, Francis added, “This is not dogma of faith – what I will say – it is my personal thing, which I like: I like to think of an empty Hell. It is a pleasure: I hope it is reality. But it is a pleasure.”
Travels to Argentina and Polynesia
About the situation in Argentina, the Pope said, “It worries me, because people are suffering so much there. It is a difficult time for the country. It is in the plan to make a trip in the second part of the year, because now there is a change of government, there are new things, and also I have some commitments. For example, in August I have to do the trip to Polynesia, there far away, and after that one would do the one to Argentina if it can be done. I want to go there. After ten years it’s okay, it’s fine, I can go.”
Childhood memories
Talking about the first thing that comes to his mind when he thinks of home, Francis explained,
“The first thing is the grandparents. There are five of us. Mom had my brother, second, when I was 13 months old, still a baby to take care of, and the grandparents lived 40 meters away. And grandma would come in the morning, take me to their house, I would spend the whole morning, have lunch with them, and then after lunch, she would take me back home.
This is a good memory that I have. And that explains why the first language I spoke was not Spanish, but Piedmontese (i.e. Italian), because they spoke Piedmontese.
It was really my first language. But this is the first memory, the grandparents: that is, the grandfather and grandmother who, by hand, would take me home later in the afternoon. It’s a nice memory.”
“What makes me smile”
Pope Francis said “The tenderness of children, that makes me smile. And then the grandparents, they are my peers but I like to talk to grandparents, to have this relationship with grandparents, they have wisdom grandparents, they have wisdom.
Don’t forget these two skills that we have to have to talk to children, listen to them, make them laugh, talk to them and grandparents, listen to stories.
Some people say, “But they are boring, they always tell the same…,” but they are life stories, and that helps as well.”
The most important thing in life
“You can sum up the journey of life with learning to love, and always you can learn to love more.
And there are so many people who gave you the example of heroic love, which led them to death, to giving their lives for others.”
Francis concluded the interview with the usual invitation, “I ask you to pray for me: pray, pray that I will always go forward, that I will not fail in my duty, but please pray for me, not against!
Thank you.”
