Pope Francis Interview: “Believers and non-believers, we’re all brothers and sisters”
(Vatican Radio) An interview showing Pope Francis answering questions from a group of Belgian young people has been broadcast on the nation’s public Flemish TV station, VRT. The young people, who were accompanied by Bishop Lucas Van Looy of Ghent, put their questions to the Pope in English and he replied in Italian. Their meeting was filmed on March 31st inside the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.
Link to the original interview: www.een.be/programmas/koppen/habemus-papam
The group of Belgian young people included a non-believer who said she was inspired by the words of Pope Francis. When they began by asking the Pope why he accepted this interview, he replied that he considered it highly valuable to speak about the worries of the young. The Pope was then asked : “Are you happy? And why?”
“Absolutely, absolutely (laughing) I’m happy! And it’s a tranquil happiness because at this age one no longer has the same happiness of a young person, there’s a difference. There’s a certain interior peace, a strong sense of peace, of happiness, that comes with age. But it’s a road that has always had problems. Even now there are problems but this happiness doesn’t go away because of the problems. No, it sees the problems, suffers because of them and then goes forward, it does something to resolve them and goes ahead. But in the depth of my heart there is this peace and happiness. It’s truly a grace from God, for me. It’s a grace and it’s not through my own merit.”
The young people next asked the pope what was the reason for his great love for the poor. “Because it’s the heart of the Gospel,” he replied.
The young people next asked the pope what was the reason for his great love for the poor. “Because it’s the heart of the Gospel,” he replied.
“For me, the heart of the Gospel is about the poor. Two months ago, I heard a person who said (on hearing this): ‘But this Pope is a communist!’ But no! This is the banner of the Gospel, not of communism: of the Gospel! But it’s poverty without ideology…. And it’s for this reason that I believe that the poor are at the centre of Jesus’ message. All you have to do is read it. The problem is that this attitude towards the poor has sometimes during history been made the subject of ideology.”
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