Pope Francis spoke Thursday in an exclusive interview with Noticias Telemundo in the Vatican about his legacy, after more than a decade at the head of the Catholic Church; about his health, which at 86 sometimes causes him "painful days"; and controversial issues such as abortion. He also offered his perspective on the war in Ukraine, where he has offered help with a peace mission; and on migration, which he has personally experienced.
Francis, who was elected pope in 2013 when he was Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, his hometown, acknowledged that for him too to migrate is to die a little, as Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu said in a message to those facing the challenge of leaving their countries: "Always, because he leaves the terroir. I am the son of migrants and I have lived that at home."
Below, the complete interview with Julio Vaqueiro, conducted just minutes before the beginning of a unique meeting with young people from the Scholas Occurrentes foundation, which he created in his native country 30 years ago and since he became pope spread to the world.
Your health: there are days that are more painful
Julio Vaqueiro: Your Holiness, thank you very much for your time, for being with us. How is he? How is your health?
Francisco: Much better. I can walk now. The knee was fixed and before I could not walk. Now I'm walking again. There are days that are more painful, like today. There are days when it doesn't, but it's part of development.
JV: He had us worried with his bronchitis.
F: Yes, it really was an unexpected thing. It was acute pneumonia. [...] But we caught it in time, I was told, and if we had waited a little longer, it would have been more serious. But I got out in four days, I got out.
JV: He looks great.
F: I'm already at the age that you have to say 'how good it looks'. It is the compliment to the old.
JV: You always say pray for me. Do you feel the strength of all the people who pray for you?
F: It's obvious, it's obvious. There are things I don't understand, but it's the people who intercede for the pastor. Sometimes people don't realize the power they have with prayer for their pastors. And the prayer of the faithful works miracles, seriously, it does miracles. Take care of the pastor. A pastor, any pastor, whether parish priest, bishop or any pastor, is as if defended, armored, with armor, in the prayer of the faithful.
[Bergoglio's health deteriorated in 2022, particularly with knee problems, to the point that he must sometimes be transferred in a wheelchair. In late March, he spent several days in a hospital to treat a lung infection. When he was discharged, he joked to reporters: "I'm still alive."
]His legacy: what has been done and what remains pending
JV: In these ten years, Your Holiness, of all the things that you have wanted to change in the Church, which is perhaps the one that has weighed most on you not having been able to change until now?
F: Myself, dear, I find it hard to change [...] But, what I wanted to change, nothing was mine. What I put into practice was what the cardinals in the pre-conclave meetings had said had to be done. And when I was elected, I said, well, we're going to put those things into practice, right? The economic system, the new laws of the Vatican State, the pastoral care of the Vatican Service, which is very important. Of course, in part of that pastorality entered the women who changed a lot inside. They're very, very executive, very practical: the lieutenant governor is a woman. And many things have been changed, but all that was requested by the cardinals who meet in the meetings with code that call him.
Pope Francis answers Julio Vaqueiro's questions. Telemundo News
JV: And what do you feel you still need to do?
F: Everything. It's funny, as you do you realize that you lack everything. It's like an insatiable thing in this. For example, this morning I met with the synodal group of Italy and well, an increasing insertion of the laity in the taking of positions, a declericalization. There are some countries that are too clericalized and that clericalism is a perversion: either you are a pastor or you do not enter. But if you are a clerical, you are not a pastor. What I always say to bishops, priests and myself to be pastors and pastors.
[Francis rose in 2013 to the top of a Church battered by the Vatileaks scandal — the theft and leaking of Joseph Ratzinger's private documentation. Among his first measures, he initiated investigations into possible cases of internal corruption and then led a discussion of a reform to include modern families, although without major doctrinal breaks. In 2022, he promulgated a new apostolic constitution focused on evangelization and established a new ecclesiastical structure. Among other reforms, he also promoted the inclusion of women in the church, establishing that they could head Vatican departments.]
On migration: it is a serious problem
JV: I want to show you some photographs of what we saw on the border of Mexico and the United States just a few days ago, at the beginning of the month. It's a baby wrapped in a blanket inside a suitcase, crossing the river. Her parents carry her in that suitcase. What is your message for a parent like this baby's? What is your message to migrants?
F: It's a serious problem [...] the problem of migrants is serious there, it's serious here, on the shores of Libya. There is precisely a book in Spanish that is the life of a boy who comes from Guinea. It takes three years to reach Spain. They take him prisoner, make him a slave, torture him and count his whole life. I recommend this book because it reads fast. It's tiny. His name is Hermanito. Read it, there you will see the drama, the drama of a migrant on the coast of Libya. But this is not very different. Now, why do people migrate? Out of necessity.
This is the path Francis believes must be taken to overcome the crisis of intolerance.
May 25, 202304:13
Once a woman, a great statesman, said the problem of African migration must be solved in Africa, helping Africa. But unfortunately Africa is a slave to a collective unconscious, which is Africa is to be exploited. And you always think about exploiting Africa. Rather the help has to be to raise and make it independent, that it does not depend so much [...] I was in the Sudan, a wonderful people that is just rearming. And yet, foreign powers immediately put their industries there, not to grow the country, but to take away. I don't say all, I don't want to name countries, but Africa's problem is that still the political dishonest unconscious is Africa is to be exploited and that hasn't changed. And hence all the migrations.
[Francis arrived at the Vatican with a vow of humility as a career Jesuit priest and a speech of solidarity and support for the poor, marginalized and oppressed, sending messages to migrants on multiple occasions. "We cannot close our eyes, it is a social scandal," he said of the migrant crisis in the world. And after the deadly fire at a migrant center in Ciudad Juarez, he dedicated a few minutes of his general audience in St. Peter's Square to talk about the tragedy grieving 38 families and prayed that they find comfort.
]Their own migrant history: leaving the terroir
JV: A few months ago we interviewed the Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu, and he says that "to emigrate is to die a little", do you think that?
F: Always, because the terroir is left. I am the son of migrants and I have lived that at home.
JV: You yourself are a migrant, but you are also a pope.
F: I was born in Baires [Buenos Aires] but my father was a migrant, my father was already an accountant for the Bank of Italy when he went there.
'You lack the native air': Pope opens up about his experience as a migrant
May 25, 202302:44
JV: And you, living in Rome, end up also being a migrant. He also dies a little, a bit like a migrant potato?
F: You always leave something, you leave something. The mate that you make with the thermos is not the same as this [makes gestures with your hands] than the mate that your mother, or your aunt or your grandmother, freshly made, gives you. It's not the same. You lack the native air.
There is a very beautiful poem by Nino Costa, in Piedmontese, which tells the story of migrants. It is called Rassa nostrana, Our race. And in the end it tells the fate of a migrant who comes and goes full of money, he became America. And there he dies in an unknown place and his life ends in a cemetery. The migrant can either get rich and well, or he can end up suffering badly if he is not received. Argentina in that, and I want to say everything for love of my country, for love of the truth, is a land of migrants. And we, I think, if I am not mistaken, of the 46 million that we have of inhabitants, only 600,000 are aborigines, the rest are migrants of the war, Spanish, Italian, Lebanese, Polish emigrants. So, all like that, French, Germans. It is a country of emigrants. A cocktail.
Pope Francis, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo. Telemundo News
[Jorge Bergoglio was born on December 17, 1936 in Buenos Aires, the son of an Italian couple formed by Mario (accountant and railway employee) and Regina (housewife in charge of raising five children). He began his service in the Catholic Church at the age of 21 after graduating as a chemical technician. He was ordained a priest in 1969 as a member of the Society of Jesus, then became provincial superior of the Jesuits. In the 1990s he was consecrated bishop and then archbishop of Buenos Aires.
]On the war in Ukraine: a mission for peace
JV: I want to ask you about the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he doesn't need intermediaries; in fact, he asks him to join his formula for peace, which includes Russia returning the territories taken. Do you think Russia should do that for peace?
F: Well, that wasn't the tone of the conversation. What I said, right? He asked me a very big favor to try to take care of the boys who had been taken to Russia. Look, I ask you that. They don't dream so much about mediations, because really the Ukrainian bloc is very strong. All of Europe, United States. So they have a very great strength of their own. No? What he was very hurt and asks for collaboration is in trying to get the boys back to Ukraine.
JV: To achieve peace, do you think Russia should return those territories?
F: It's a political problem. Peace will be achieved the day they can talk, either the two of them or through each other.
For the pope, two conditions are necessary for the US to overcome the crisis of gun violence
May 25, 202301:43
[Francis has always had a peace-oriented discourse. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he visited the country's embassy to show his "concern about war" in what was described as an unprecedented gesture. In early May he announced that a secret peace "mission" was underway, saying the Vatican is willing to help facilitate the return of Ukrainian children brought to Russia. Soon after, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had a meeting, and a cardinal was later appointed to lead the mission. The process is in a study phase, the Holy See has clarified.
]On abortion, the pope leaves two questions
JV: In the United States there is a very big debate, Your Holiness, around abortion. I know what the position of the Church is, but do you believe that a woman who was raped has the right not to have her child who is the product of that rape?
F: I say this about abortion: in any embryology book of those studied by second-year boys of the university it is said that a month after conception, before the mother realizes it, the whole organ system is already drawn inside and the DNA is clear. In other words, it is a living being. I don't say a person, it's a living being. So, I ask myself a question: is it lawful to eliminate a living being to solve a problem? Second question: Is it lawful to hire a hitman to solve a problem? And there it is. You're not going to get me out of there. Because it's the truth.
[Francis recently outlined his position regarding women terminating their pregnancies in a conversation with 10 Spanish-speaking young women for a documentary called Amen: Francis Responds. Asked about abortion, Francis said he instructed priests who care for women who have had abortions to "please don't ask too much and be merciful, like Jesus." He added that "a woman who has an abortion must be accompanied, she must not be sent to hell all at once." But he also said abortion should also be looked at "scientifically and with a certain coolness." He said that one month after conception, an embryo is not "a bunch of cells that came together but is a systemized human life."
The Vatican officially does not approve abortion, but there are leaders and believers within the Catholic Church who are in favor of the right and access to reproductive health. In the U.S., Catholics for Choice works for the right of every person to make their own decisions and access the health services they need. The UN has severely criticized the Vatican for its attitudes toward homosexuality, family planning and abortion, and called for a review of its policies to ensure that children's rights and access to health care are protected.
Celibacy and sexual abuse in the Church
JV: You've talked about the possibility of revising celibacy. Do you think celibacy is linked, does it have anything to do with the abuse of minors within the church?
F: Dear, 32%, in other countries 36%, of the abuses is in the family, uncle, grandfather, and all married, or with neighbors. Then, in the places of sport, later, in the schools... There are the statistics, they are those. So it has nothing to do with it because the uncles are married, the grandparents are married and sometimes they are the first rapists. [...] I'm not saying all uncles, grandparents. I'm talking about statistics.
[After being named pope, Francis explored ways to deal with priests' abuse of minors and apologized on multiple occasions to victims. In March 2023, it expanded responsibility in canon law for those covering cases in the church, including lay led associations authorized by the Vatican. The Catholic Church continues to be the subject of scrutiny and scandal for the abuses committed and committed by its members. Recently, it was learned that more than 1,900 minors were abused by hundreds of Catholic religious in Illinois over seven decades.
]