FOR the Argentine pope, spontaneous gestures and remarks, and conversations with unlikely interlocutors, have become part of a well-established personal style, to the point where people are no longer surprised. But with due allowance for all that, he said some remarkable things in a recent interview with La Vanguardia, a daily paper published in Barcelona which runs an impressive global news-gathering operation (you can read an English translation in the National Catholic Register).
Chatting comfortably in his native Spanish, he made some comments that were interesting enough, but broadly expected. For example, he implied that the persecution of Christians was worse now than at any time in history, although it didn't "seem prudent to talk about" many of the things he knew. He also made a strong, if qualified, defence of Pope Pius XII, who led the church during the second world war. "I don't mean that Pius XII did not make mistakes—I myself make many—but one needs to see his role in the context of the time..." Pius had hidden and protected many Jews, and he faced hard moral dilemmas over how openly he should confront the Nazis.
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