Pope calls for words of Lord’s Prayer to be changed

POPE FRANCIS has called on the Roman Catholic Church to alter the Lord’s Prayer because he believes the current translation suggests God is capable of leading us “into temptation”.

Instead, “Our father”, which is the best-known prayer in Christianity, should be said using the phrasing adopted by French bishops, which reads as “do not let us enter into temptation”.

The alternative wording used in France implies that it is through human fault that people are led to sin, rather than by God.

The Pope made the suggestion during a televised interview on Wednesday evening, in which he claimed that the traditional phrasing was “not a good translation”.

“I am the one who falls. It’s not him pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen,” he said. “A father doesn’t do that, a father helps you to get up immediately. It’s Satan who leads us into temptation, that’s his department.”

The prayer is part of Christian liturgical culture and memorised from childhood by hundreds of millions of Catholics.

The Lord’s Prayer has been updated several times in recent centuries, with the Church of England’s website containing both the traditional version and a contemporary one.

It comes a month after Bible scholars announced they had produced the most accurate edition of the New Testament since it was first translated from Greek.