OPINION (CP) – Eugenio Scalfari, a 95-year-old self-professed atheist and journalist who has been a longtime friend of Pope Francis, recently claimed the pontiff doesn’t believe Jesus Christ incarnate was divine. Scalfari wrote in the Italian publication La Repubblica that the pontiff told him that once Jesus Christ became incarnate, He was a man, a “man of exceptional virtues” but “not at all a God,” according to CNS News.
Responding to the report this week, Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See’s press office, said in a statement cited by the Catholic News Agency that Scalfari’s recollection of his conversation with the pope was not a “faithful account” of what he was told on the subject. “As already stated on other occasions, the words that Dr. Eugenio Scalfari attributes in quotation marks to the Holy Father during talks with him cannot be considered a faithful account of what was actually said but represent a personal and free interpretation of what he heard, as appears completely evident from what is written today regarding the divinity of Jesus Christ,” Bruni said. FULL REPORT