St. John Paul II taught the world that truly great faith and holiness dwell in "the normality of a person who lives in profound communion with Christ," Pope Francis said in a new book.<\/a><\/p>\nThe priest said he spoke to Pope Francis about St. John Paul several times between June 2019 and January 2020. A theologian and popular retreat leader, Father Epicoco is president of the Fides et Ratio Institute for religious studies in Aquila, Italy.<\/p>\n
Pope Francis said there is "total harmony" between his thoughts about the meaning of ministerial priesthood and St. John Paul's teaching on priesthood.<\/p>\n
Asked if he thought the abolition of mandatory celibacy for most Latin-rite Catholic priests would be a way to address the priest shortage, he responded: "I am convinced that celibacy is a gift, a grace, and following in the footsteps of Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, I strongly feel an obligation to think of celibacy as a decisive grace that characterizes the Latin Catholic Church. I repeat: It is a grace."<\/p>\n
Father Epicoco also asked Pope Francis about St. John Paul's insistence that women cannot be priests because Jesus chose only men as his apostles.<\/p>\n
"The question is no longer open for discussion because the pronouncement of John Paul II was definitive," Pope Francis said. However, he said, usually the question betrays a misunderstanding of the role of ministerial priesthood and focuses only on people's function in the church, not their importance.<\/p>\n
Like Mary, he said, women are the ones who "teach the church to pass through the night trusting the daylight will come, even when daylight is still far off. Only a woman is able to teach us a love that is hope."<\/p>\n
Father Epicoco also noted how often Pope Francis speaks of evil, and he asked Pope Francis where he sees evil at work today.<\/p>\n
"One place is 'gender theory,'" the pope said. "Right away I want to clarify that I am not referring to people with a homosexual orientation. The Catechism of the Catholic Church invites us to accompany them and provide pastoral care to these brothers and sisters of ours."<\/p>\n
Gender theory, he said, has a "dangerous" cultural aim of erasing all distinctions between men and women, male and female, which would "destroy at its roots" God's most basic plan for human beings: "diversity, distinction. It would make everything homogenous, neutral. It is an attack on difference, on the creativity of God and on men and women."<\/p>\n
Pope Francis said he did not want "to discriminate against anyone," but was convinced that human peace and well-being had to be based on the reality that God created people with differences and that accepting — not ignoring — those differences is what brings people together.<\/p>\n
Speaking of his relationship with St. John Paul II, Pope Francis said he was in the car in Argentina when he heard that then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyla had been elected pope in 1978. "I heard the name Wojtyla and thought, 'an African pope.' Then they told me he was Polish."<\/p>\n
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"We cannot forget the suffering of this great pope," he said. "His refined and acute sensitivity to mercy certainly was influence by the spirituality of St. Faustina Kowalska, who died during his adolescence, but also — perhaps, especially — because of his having witnessed the communist and Nazi persecutions. He suffered so much!"<\/p>\n
Pope Francis' homilies and pastoral letters as a bishop in Argentina in the 1990s were full of quotations from St. John Paul, Father Epicoco noted. "Yes," Pope Francis said, "I was perceived by many as a conservative. Some saw me that way, but I simply always felt great harmony with what the pope was saying."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This book is being published on February 11th, but an English edition may not be out for awhile. "In 2001, when I was made a cardinal, I felt a strong desire when I knelt to receive the cardinal's biretta not only to exchange the sign of peace with him, but to kiss his hand," Pope […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7569,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217\/revisions\/7569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}