In a new series of troubling revelations, Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari has quoted Pope Francis as denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus in stating that the crucified Christ emerged from the tomb as a spirit rather than as a body.
In a front-page article in Tuesday’s La Repubblica, Scalfari expands on his earlier quote from Pope Francis, where the Holy Father is interpreted as rejecting the divinity of Jesus while on earth, and dovetails that statement with Francis’ alleged denial of Christ’s bodily resurrection.
According to Scalfari, Pope Francis said, “He [Jesus] was a man until he was put in the sepulchre by the women who restored his corpse. That night in the sepulchre the man disappeared and from that cave came out in the form of a spirit that met the women and the Apostles, still preserving the shadow of the person, and then definitively disappeared.”
Church Militant contacted the Holy See Press Office for comment, which was caught by surprise and was unaware of the new allegations. Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, told Church Militant:
As already stated on other occasions, the words that Dr. Eugenio Scalfari attributes in quotation marks to the Holy Father during the interviews he had cannot be considered as a faithful account of what was actually said, but rather represent a personal and free interpretation of those who listened, as appears completely evident from what is written today regarding the divinity of Jesus Christ.
The explosive new quotes have been published in Scalfari’s book Il Dio unico e la società moderna: Incontri con papa Francesco e il cardinale Carlo Maria Martini (“The One God and Modern Society: Meetings With Pope Francis and Cdl. Carlo Maria Martini”) released on Tuesday.
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