The Vatican on Thursday rebuked Eugenio Scalfari, 93, a well-known Italian journalist who is the founder of Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper for misquoting him on the veracity of Hell.
Recall that the paper had earlier on Thursday published an interview with the Pontiff where it quoted Pope Francis as saying hell ‘does not exist’.
In the interview, Francis reportedly said that those who repent can be forgiven, but those who don’t repent simply “disappear.”
“They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear,” Pope Francis said, as translated by Catholic blog Rorate Caeli.
The Vatican issued a statement after the comments spread like wildfire on social media, saying the pope never granted the interview and the story was “the result of (the reporter’s) reconstruction,” not a “faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.”
“What is reported by the author in today’s article is the result of his reconstruction, in which the literal words pronounced by the Pope are not quoted. No quotation of the aforementioned article must therefore be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father,” the Vatican said in a statement translated by the Catholic News Agency.
The Catholic New Agency also pointed out that, after a controversial 2013 article, Scalfari admitted that some words attributed to the pontiff “were not shared by Pope Francis” himself.
Scalfari, an atheist, is known for not using tape recorders or taking notes during interviews.
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