After circling a massive, crumbling public housing complex on the outskirts of Rome, Pope Francis had an emotional encounter with the neighbourhood’s children.
Question-and-answer sessions with youngsters are a standard part of Pope Francis’ parish visits. And, at St Paul of the Cross parish on April 15, there were the usual questions like, “How did you feel when you were elected Pope?”
But then it was Emanuele’s turn. The young boy smiled at the pope as he approached the microphone. But then froze. “I can’t do it,” Emanuele said.
Msgr. Sapienza helped the boy up to the platform where the pope was seated. Emanuele was sobbing by that point, and Pope Francis enveloped him in a big embrace, patting his head and speaking softly to him.
With their heads touching, the Pope and the boy spoke privately to each other before Emanuele returned to his seat.
Pope Francis said he had asked Emanuele if he could share the boy’s question and the boy agreed. “‘A little while ago my father passed away. He was a nonbeliever, but he had all four of his children baptised. He was a good man. Is dad in heaven?’”
“How beautiful to hear a son say of his father, ‘He was good,’” the Pope told the children. “And what a beautiful witness of a son who inherited the strength of his father, who had the courage to cry in front of all of us. If that man was able to make his children like that, then it’s true, he was a good man. He was a good man.
“That man did not have the gift of faith, he wasn’t a believer, but he had his children baptised. He had a good heart,” Pope Francis said.
“God is the one who says who goes to heaven,” the Pope explained.
The next step in answering Emanuele’s question, he said, would be to think about what God is like and, especially, what kind of heart God has. “What do you think? A father’s heart. God has a dad’s heart. And with a dad who was not a believer, but who baptised his children and gave them that bravura, do you think God would be able to leave him far from himself?”
“Does God abandon his children?” the Pope asked. “Does God abandon his children when they are good?”
The children shouted, “No.”
“There, Emanuele, that is the answer,” the Pope told the boy. “God surely was proud of your father, because it is easier as a believer to baptise your children than to baptize them when you are not a believer. Surely this pleased God very much.”
Pope Francis encouraged Emanuele to “talk to your dad; pray to your dad.”
Earlier, a young girl named Carlotta also asked the pope a delicate question: “When we are baptised, we become children of God. People who aren’t baptized, are they not children of God?”
“What does your heart tell you?” the Pope asked Carlotta. She said, they are, too.
“Right, and I’ll explain,” the Pope told her. “We are all children of God. Everyone. Everyone.”
The nonbaptised, members of other religions, those who worship idols, “even the mafiosi,” who terrorise the neighbourhood around the parish, are children of God, though “they prefer to behave like children of the devil,” he said.
“God created everyone, loves everyone and put in everyone’s heart a conscience so they would recognise what is good and distinguish it from what is bad,” the Pope said.
The difference, he said, is that “when you were baptised, the Holy Spirit entered into that conscience and reinforced your belonging to God and, in that sense, you became more of a daughter of God because you’re a child of God like everyone, but with the strength of the Holy Spirit.”
Full story at The Catholic Herald.
There are many versions of this going around on the Internet. There is video if anyone speaks Italian. I would love to know which version is accurate.
The only honest answer to the question is, “I don’t know.”
A kind answer to the child would have been, “I don’t know, but we should always hope in God’s mercy.”
It is good to tell the child to pray for his father’s eternal rest also.
We should pray for him, also. And for the Holy Father.
You are right.
One way of looking at the video:
The little boy was pushed in front of a microphone, instructed to ask a complicated question.
He could not remember the scripted question.
He could not do it. He was afraid. He tried to leave, but was constrained. He was held by the arm.
He cried for a long time. He wanted to go back to his mother.
No one heard what, if anything, he said to the pope, while he was held in place at the pope’s chair.
He was still crying.
After it was over, he left in a hurry, crying, as he had tried to do before he was constrained to remain on stage.
He never wanted to ask a question. Maybe he never did.
While Pope Francis does not hold as many advanced degrees as Pope Benedict XVI, he certainly has a beautiful and Pastoral way of responding to others in a honest, holy and supportive manner. God Bless him.
Sometimes,” yes” and sometimes “no” Some things he has advocated have been very confusing If he accually said or wrote them, and they were not taken out of context.. God uses both the lowly and those high born for his purpose. Just as he used St. Catherine Loboure and shepherd children, he has also used King Louis of France. St. Elizabeht of Hungary and many more at various levels of society. Remember it was a Pharisee, St. Joseph of Arimathea, who buried the Lord Jesus, and St. Paul was a Pharisees also.
And God used the cranky old St. Jerome and pugnacious St. Nicholas as well as the sweet St. Therese, so we should be very careful whom we disparage. Pray the Lord give us the grace to rightly decern.
This is a difficult one (assuming that the child was not a plant).
No one knows the mind of Jesus on judging a man before Him. There may be good and valid reasons — to God — to admit the father to Heaven. No, the Pope cannot “will” the father to Heaven.
On paper, however, the father does not appear to be someone to whom Heaven is promised. The Pope was merciful in handling the circumstances, but more needs to be said about this. Sadly, the Zombie-Liberals that inhabit the Vatican pretty much believe that there is no Hell (and likely no Heaven, either). Poor theology, then, is no scandal to them as it is all fantasy anyway.