Pope raps religious fundamentalists during in-flight press conference

April 01, 2019

Pope Francis argued that Christianity as well as Islam is troubled by fundamentalists, during an exchange with reporters on his return flight from Morocco.

Asked about the trip to Morocco that he had just concluded, the Pope said that it was part of an effort to encourage dialogue between Christianity and Islam: “a beautiful flower of coexistence that promises to bear fruit.” The Pontiff went on to compliment his hosts for their open attitude toward religious dialogue, saying that “in Morocco there is freedom of worship, there is religious liberty, there’s liberty of belonging to a religious creed.”

Morocco’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and the Christians who constitute less than 1% of the country’s population—nearly all of them foreigners—are allowed to worship freely. But native Christian face heavy social pressure and some government harassment, and the country’s law forbid efforts to convert Muslims. During his stay Pope Francis implicitly acknowledged that policy, saying: “The Church grows not through proselytism but by attraction.”

The Pontiff recognized that some Islamic countries place greater restrictions on religious freedom, but suggested that further dialogue could alleviate tensions. The said that Islamic attitudes could change, and remarked that in Christianity, too, there are some people who resist an open attitude. “In every religion there is always a fundamentalist group that does not want to go ahead and lives on bitter memories, on the struggles of the past, looking for more war and also sowing fear,” he said. Pope Francis said that Muslims will “grow in conscience” to accept religious freedom, and argued that, by a similar process, the Catholic Church has come to condemn capital punishment:

So, we understand, for example, that today we in the Church have removed the death penalty from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Three hundred years ago, heretics were burned alive. Because the Church has grown in moral conscience, respect for the person, and freedom of worship. We too must continue to grow. There are people, Catholics, who do not accept what the Second Vatican Council said about freedom of worship, freedom of conscience. There are people who don’t accept it. Catholics. Also we have this problem. But, the Muslim brothers also grow in conscience.

During the in-flight interview the Pope repeated his call for acceptance of migrants, saying that “the builders of walls, whether made of barbed wire that cuts with knives or bricks, will become prisoners of the walls they make.”

 

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Further information:

• Full text of Pope Francis’ in-flight press conference from Rabat (CNA)
• Pope inflight presser: 'He who builds walls will end up imprisoned by them' (Vatican News)