In yet another wide-ranging interview, Pope Francis said Monday that he doesn’t plan to step down anytime soon, though he prays for the strength to do so when the time is right.
If the day comes when he does resign, the pontiff said he would prefer to be considered the “Bishop emeritus of Rome rather than pope emeritus” and to dedicate his time to the confession of the faithful, the practice of charity, and visiting the sick in some Italian parish.
“If I survive after resignation, I would like to do one thing: confess and go to see the sick,” he said.
On other fronts, the pope said pro-choice Catholic politicians should “talk to their pastor” about their “incoherence” with church teaching, and he repeated a familiar warning about the risks of a third world war.
Francis also answered – and, to some extent, dodged – questions about Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, the clerical sexual abuse scandals, abortion, his resignation, and why he doesn’t go back to his home country, Argentina.
The Pope’s remarks came in a July 11 interview with Mexican journalists Valentina Alazraki and Maria Antonieta Collins, published on the Vix streaming channel of Noticias Univision 24/7.
On the subject of war, Francis noted he changed the Catechism of the Catholic Church to say that both the use and possession of nuclear weapons is immoral, because an accident could lead to the killing of half of humanity: “We cannot play with death in our hands like that. We were playing with death.”