Vatican City - “Yes, I will go to Dubai. I think I will leave December 1st until December 3rd.” said Pope Francis during an interview with Italian news program Tg1.
The Holy Father spoke about the possibility of global conflict, addressed a number topics, and urged that we must not become accustomed to war and he decries the arms trade.
Cop28 and Dubai visit
Pope Francis said he will visit Dubai to attend the Cop28. “I’ll stay there for three days. I remember that when I went to Strasbourg, to the European Parliament, and President Hollande sent Environment Minister Segolene Royal to receive me.”
“And she asked me, 'Are you preparing something on the environment? You should do it before the Paris meeting.' I called some scientists here, who moved quickly. ‘Laudato sí’ was released, it came out before Paris. And the meeting in Paris was the most beautiful of all. After Paris, everyone went backward, and it takes courage to move forward in this.”
Cop28 is the first Global Stocktake (GST) which will provide a comprehensive assessment of progress since adopting the Paris Agreement. This help align the efforts on climate action, including measures that need to be put in place to bridge the gaps in progress. The COP28 UAE presidency will work to ensure that the world responds to the GST with a clear action plan.
Pope Francis last visited the United Arab Emirates in February 2019, marking the first ever visit by a Pontiff to the Arabian Peninsula. The Holy Father has also visited the Kingdom of Bahrain in November 2022.
Israel and Gaza
Regarding the situation in the Middle East, the Pope affirmed once again, “Every war is a defeat. Nothing is solved with war. Nothing. Everything is gained with peace, with dialogue.” He continued, “They entered the kibbutzim, took hostages. They killed someone. And then the reaction. The Israelis go to recover those hostages, to save them. In war, one slap provokes another. One strong and the other even stronger, and so it goes on. War is a defeat. I felt it as one more defeat. Two peoples who must live together. With that wise solution: two peoples, two states. The Oslo Accords: two clearly delineated states and Jerusalem with a special status”.
Recalling last week’s prayer for peace, Pope Francis reiterated that the world is going through a “very dark hour.” He added, “One cannot find the ability to reflect clearly and at the darkest hour I will add: one more defeat. It has been like this since the last world war, from 1945 until now, one defeat after another, because the wars have not stopped. But the most serious problem still is the arms industry. A person who understands investments, who I met in a meeting, told me that today the investments that generate the most income are weapons factories”.
The Pope said he speaks every day by telephone to the religious who are in Gaza. “I call the Egyptian assistant parish priest, Father Yussuf, every day and he tells me, ‘In the parish we have 563 people, all Christians and also some Muslims. Sick children cared for by Mother Teresa’s nuns’. In this small parish, there are 563 people! Every day I try to accompany them. For the moment, thank God, the Israeli forces respect that parish.”
War and anti-Semitism
“I remember”, the Pope said, “a very hard moment at the beginning of the pontificate was when the war broke out in Syria with such force, and I held an act of prayer in the square, where there were Christians and also Muslims, who carried their carpet to pray. This was a very difficult moment. For me, it’s a bad thing, but then, it’s not nice to say this, you get used to it, unfortunately, you get used to it. We must not get used to it.”
Regarding a possible global escalation, the Pope said, “It would be the end of many things and many lives. I think human wisdom will stop these things. Yes, there is the possibility but... And this war affects us because of what Israel, Palestine, the Holy Land, Jerusalem mean. But [the war in] Ukraine also affects us because it is nearby. But there are many other wars that don’t affect us: Kivu; Yemen; Myanmar with the Rohingya, who are martyrs. The world is at war, but the arms industry is behind it.”
Pope Francis also spoke of anti-Semitism, which “unfortunately remains hidden.” He said, “You can see it, for example, in young people here and there doing something. It is true that in this case it is very serious but there is always something anti-Semitic; and it is not always enough to see the Holocaust that took place in the Second World War, these six million killed, enslaved, and it has not passed. Unfortunately, it has not passed. I don't know how to explain it and I have no explanation, it’s a fact that I see it and I don’t like it.”
The conflict in Ukraine
When asked about the Ukrainian reaction to the peace initiatives of the Holy See, Pope Francis responded: “I think of the Ukrainian people, we must not judge them today. The Ukrainian people are a martyr people, there were very severe persecutions during Stalin’s time. They are a martyr people. I read a commemorative book about this and about the terrible martyrdom, it was terrible ... it was a people who suffered a lot and now anything makes them relive that. I understand them and I received President Zelensky, I understand, but peace is needed. Stop! Stop for a while and look for a peace agreement, agreements are the real solution to this. For both.”
The Pope recalled that, “On the second day of the war in Ukraine I went to the Russian embassy, I felt that I had to go there, and I said that I was willing to go to Putin if it was of any use... And from that moment on I had a good conversation with the Russian embassy. When I presented some prisoners, I went there and they freed them, they also freed some from Azov. In short, the embassy comported themselves very well in freeing the people who could be freed. But the dialogue stopped there. At that moment Lavrov wrote to me: ‘Thank you if you want to come, but it’s not necessary’. I wanted to go to both places.”
Women in the Church
“Here in the Vatican, there are more women in the workplace. For example, the deputy governor of the Vatican State is a woman, a nun, and the governor has a more generic role, but she is the one in charge. In the Council for the Economy there are six cardinals and six lay people; of these six lay people, five are women. Then there are already secretaries in place of monsignors: the secretary of consecrated life is a woman; of integral human development, a woman: in the commission to choose bishops there are three women, because women understand things that we don’t understand, women have a special instinct for the situation, and it is needed. I believe they should be included in the normal work of the Church.”
Regarding the ordination of women, Pope Francis said: “There is a theological problem there, not an administrative problem. Women can do anything in the Church; you can even have a Governor, there is no problem. But from a theological, ministerial point of view, they are different things: the Petrine principle, which is that of jurisdiction; and the Marian principle, which is the more important one because the Church is female, the Church is bride, the Church is not male, she is female – it takes a theology to understand this – and the power of the female Church and women in the Church is stronger and more important than that of male ministers. Mary is more important than Peter because the Church is female. But if we want to reduce this to functionalism, we lose.”
Synod and celibacy
For Pope Francis, the outcome of the Synod on synodality was “positive.” “We talked about everything with complete freedom,” he said, “and this is a beautiful thing. And it was possible to create a final document, which must be studied in this second part for the next session in October: like that on the family, this too is a Synod in two stages. I believe that we have arrived precisely at that exercise of synodality that Saint Paul VI had wanted at the end of the Council because he had realized that the Western Church had lost the synodal dimension that the Eastern Church, on the other hand, has retained.”
Regarding the topic of homosexual couples, Pope Francis said, “When I say ‘everyone, everyone, everyone’, it’s the people. The Church receives people, everyone, and does not ask what you are like. Then, within, everyone grows and matures in their Christian belonging. It’s true that today it’s a bit fashionable to talk about this. The Church receives everyone. It’s another thing when there are organizations that want to enter. The principle is this: the Church receives all those who can be baptized. Organizations cannot be baptized. People, yes.”
The most difficult moment
When asked what the most difficult moment of his pontificate was, the Pope responded, “Perhaps it was difficult and harsh when I had to oppose the Syrian war... I didn’t know what to do, it was very difficult. I wasn’t used to something like this, and [there was] also the fear of making mistakes and doing harm. It has been difficult. There were also some easy or not-so-easy moments. But the Lord has always helped me to resolve, or at least have patience, wait to resolve.”
When asked what scares him, the Pope replied: “Small fears come. Let this or that happen. The war in the Holy Land scares me. These people, how will this story end? But it is resolved before the Lord. Not that the fears go away. But they remain in a human way, so to speak. It’s good to have fears.”
Faith
When asked if his faith has ever wavered, the Pope replied, “In the sense of losing it, no. But in the sense of not feeling it and walking in dark paths – Where is the Lord? – you feel that the Lord is hiding, where is He? Or we go back and away from Him. And where are You, Lord? And why don’t You fix this? And you feel the Lord speaking to you within because I don’t have a magic wand. The Lord is not Mandrake [the Magician], no. He is something else.”
“Between Maradona and Messi I prefer Pelè”
Finally, the Pope answered the question of which of the two great Argentine football players, Maradona or Messi, he prefers: “I’ll say a third: Pelé.”
-VN