IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring
By Cindy Wooden
ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT FROM
AFRICA (CNS) — Pope Francis told reporters he is well aware that God is a god
of surprises, but he had not been prepared for what a surprise his first visit
to Africa would be.
Obviously tired, but equally
content, Pope Francis told reporters he prayed in a mosque in Bangui, Central
African Republic, and rode around a Muslim neighborhood with the imam seated
with him in the popemobile. Both were spontaneous initiatives of the pope Nov.
30, his last day in Africa.
Returning to Rome from Bangui
later that day, the pope spent more than 60 minutes with reporters in the back
of his plane, responding to their questions.
“The crowds, the joy, the
ability to celebrate even with an empty stomach” were impressions the pope
said he would take home with him after his six-day trip to Kenya, Uganda and
the Central African Republic.
After two years of civil war,
the pope told reporters, the people of the Central African Republic want “peace,
reconciliation and forgiveness.”
“For years, they lived as
brothers and sisters,” the pope said, and local Catholic, Muslim and
evangelical Christian leaders are doing their best to help their people return
to that situation of peace, coexistence and mutual respect.
Leaders of every religion must
teach values, and that is what is happening in Central African Republic, Pope
Francis said.
“One of the most-rare
values today is that of brotherhood,” a value essential for peace, he said.
“Fundamentalism is a
disease that is found in all religions. We Catholics have some,” he said. “I
can say this because it is my church.”
“Religious fundamentalism isn’t
religion, it’s idolatry,” he told the press. Ideas and false certainties
take the place of faith, love of God and love of others.
“You cannot cancel a whole
religion because there is a group or many groups of fundamentalists at certain
moments of history,” the pope said.
As the pope ended his trip,
global representatives were beginning the U.N. climate conference in Paris to
discuss the possibility of forging a binding international agreement to reduce
climate change.
Pope Francis said he was not
sure what would happen at the conference, “but I can say this, it’s now or
never.” Too little has been done over the past 10-15 years, he said, and “every
year the situation gets worse.”
“We are on the verge of
suicide, to put it strongly,” he said.
Given his visits to Uganda and
Kenya, where new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths continue, Pope Francis
was asked if he thought the church “should change its teaching” about
the use of condoms.
Pope Francis responded that an
ongoing question for Catholic moral theology is whether condoms in that case
are an instrument to prevent death or a contraceptive — in which case they
would violate church teaching on openness to life.
But, he said, the question is
too narrow. People are dying because of a lack of clean water and adequate
food. Once the world takes serious steps to solve those problems, then it would
be “legitimate to ask whether it is licit” to use condoms to prevent
the spread of HIV and AIDS.
Pope Francis said that at various
moments of his trip, he visited the very poor, people who lack everything and
have suffered tremendously. He said he knew that a small percentage of people
— “maybe 17 percent” — of the world’s population controls the vast
majority of the world’s wealth — “and I think, ‘How can these people not
be aware?’ It’s such suffering.”
To say the world’s economy has
put profits and not people at the center and to denounce “the idolatry of
the god money,” he said, “is not communism. It’s the truth.”
The pope also was asked about
the Vatican trial underway in connection with the leak and publication of
confidential documents related to Vatican finances.
“I haven’t lost any sleep”
over the leaks and the arrest of a monsignor, his assistant, a woman who served
on a former Vatican commission and the two authors who wrote books allegedly
based on the material, Pope Francis said.
However, he said, he had hoped
the trial would be over before the opening Dec. 8 of the Year of Mercy, but he
does not think that will be possible because the defendants’ lawyers need
adequate time to defend their clients properly.
As for future trips, Pope
Francis was not full of surprises. He said he plans to go to Mexico and visit
cities where St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI never went. The trip is
expected in late February.
Pope Francis said he has to go
to Mexico City, “but if it wasn’t for Our Lady I wouldn’t.” So he
will visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, then go to
Chiapas, Morelia and, “almost for sure, on the way back to Rome, I will
spend a day or part of a day in Ciudad Juarez,” on the Mexican-U.S.
border.
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