Pope Francis has voiced an objection to the Italian translation of the Lord's Prayer. He made his case briefly in a recent interview on TV2000, the television network of the Italian bishops' conference. Like many people, Francis finds it odd to imply that God leads people into temptation. “The one who leads you into temptation is Satan,” he says. “That's Satan's office.”
Major news organizations have run exaggerated headlines. They are wrong to report that the pope has called for the familiar form of the ancient Christian prayer to be “updated” or reworded, although he does seem poised to do so. A new translation of the Notre Père, the Lord's Prayer in French, went into effect in the Catholic Church on December 3, and in the interview Pope Francis expressed his approval. The French translation represents a movement away from what he says the Italian translation gets wrong. His idea of how the Lord's Prayer should read in Italian approximates the revised French translation and even more closely the Spanish translation used in Catholic liturgy: No nos dejes caer en la tentación (“Do not let us fall into temptation”). In criticizing the Italian translation, Francis speaks cogently in theological terms of sin and free will but is silent on the need for translations of the Lord's Prayer to hew as closely as possible to the biblical Greek.
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