Pope: Better to be an atheist than a hypocrite
Pope Francis has delivered another criticism of some members of his own Church, suggesting it is better to be an atheist than one of “many” Catholics who he said lead a hypocritical double life.
In improvised comments in the sermon of his private morning Mass in his residence on Thursday, he said: “It is a scandal to say one thing and do another. That is a double life.
“There are those who say, ‘ I am very Catholic, I always go to Mass, I belong to this and that association,’” the head of the 1.2 billion- member Catholic Church said, according to a Vatican Radio transcript.
He said that some of those people should also say, “My life is not Christian, I don’t pay my employees proper salaries, I exploit people, I do dirty business, I launder money — a double life.”
He added: “There are many Catholics who are like this and they cause scandal. How many times have we all heard people say, ‘ If that person is a Catholic, it is better to be an atheist.’”
Since his election in 2013, Francis has often told Catholics, both priests and lay people, to practise what their religion preaches.
In his often impromptu sermons, he has condemned sexual abuse of children by priests as tantamount to a “Satanic Mass”, said Catholics in the mafia excommunicate themselves, and told his own cardinals not to act as if they were “princes”.
Less than t wo months after his election, he said Christians should see atheists as good people if they do good.
He also said that even atheists can go to heaven thanks to the redemption of Jesus.
He granted an interview to an atheist journalist, and told the reporter that efforts to convert people to Christianity are “solemn nonsense” and each person “must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them”.
He has also been friendly towards Jews, particularly through his longtime friend, Argentine Rabbi Abraham Skorka.
On Thursday, Skorka led a group of rabbis to the Vatican, where they gave Francis a new edition of the Torah.
Looking at the text of the five books of Moses, the most holy books for Jews as well as a key part of the Christian Old Testament, Francis called the Torah “the Lord’s gift, his revelation, his word”, according to the Vatican’s text of his remarks.