Pope backs his marrying of couple on plane

POPE Francis on Sunday defended his decision to marry a couple aboard a plane in Chile last week, responding to criticism by conservatives that it flew in the face of Church rules and set a bad precedent.

“Someone told me I was crazy to do something like that,” he joked during a news conference on the plane taking him back to Rome from Lima, where he ended his trip to Chile and Peru.

In the first such ceremony on a papal flight, Francis married Paula Podest Ruiz, 39, and Carlos Ciuffardi Elorriga, 41, both cabin attendants on Latam airlines.

While the gesture made world headlines and was mostly well-received by Catholics, conservative Catholic commentators and bloggers who regularly criticise the pope on a host of issues blasted the wedding at 36,000 feet.

They said it would make it difficult for pastors to deal with Catholic couples who want to get married in unusual secular locations instead of a church. Those couples would say “the pope did it, why can’t you?” one commentator wrote.

But the pope said the situation of the Chilean couple was a particular one because they had been already been married in a civil service eight years ago and were not able to

marry in their parish church because it collapsed in a 2010 earthquake.

“I questioned them [about marriage] and the responses were clear. It was clear they had made a commitment for life,” the pope said, adding that the couple had even remembered subjects from the Catholic pre-marriage courses they had taken long ago.

“Tell the pastors that they were prepared and I made a judgement call. The sacraments are for people. All the conditions were clear,” he said. Also on Sunday, just before his departure from Lima, the pope brought down the house, or more precisely the church, when he addressed cloistered nuns who were given special permission to leave their convents to see him.

At the start of his last day in Peru Francis addressed some 500 nuns, known as “contemplatives,” who usually live a life of prayer and rarely leave their convents except for medical reasons.

“Seeing you all here an unkind thought

comes to my mind, that you took advantage [of me] to get out of the convent a bit to take a stroll,” he said, drawing roars of laughter from the nuns, many of whom were elderly.

Later in his talk to the nuns gathered in a Lima church, he sent a long-distance greeting to four cloistered nuns in his native Buenos Aires. He thanked them for their prayers for him and added, “The rest of you aren’t jealous, are you?”

“Nooooo,” they shot back, like schoolgirls to a teacher.

He also urged them not to succumb to gossiping in their convents, comparing it to “terrorism”, something he regularly tells priests and nuns on his global travels.

“You know what a gossiping nun is?” he asked. “A terrorist.”

The again.

“Because gossip is like a bomb. One throws it, it causes destruction and you walk away tranquilly. No terrorist nuns! No gossip, and know that the best remedy against gossip is to bite your tongue,” he said. nuns laughed