Pope Francis created lots of social media buzz on Wednesday, first when he was incorrectly quoted in a newspaper as saying “there is no hell,” and then by his special gesture in St. Peter's Square to a 12-year-old American boy with Down syndrome who survived cancer.
The Vatican released a statement on Thursday saying the there-is-no-hell quotation in an article in La Repubblica was misconstrued from an exchange in a private meeting between the pope and Eugenio Scalfari, an atheist friend of Francis, the CNS News reported.
From the conversation with Scalfari that was described as an interview by LaRepubblica, and translated in Rorate Caeli, Pope Francis was reported to have said condemned souls disappear instead of going to hell, an apparent contradiction in Catholic teaching, CNS News said.
"They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls," he was quoted, per CNS News.
The Vatican hastened to correct that.
"The Holy Father Francis recently received the founder of the newspaper La Repubblica in a private meeting on the occasion of Easter, without however giving him any interviews," the Vatian statement said, per CNS News. "What is reported by the author in today's article [in La Repubblica] is the result of his reconstruction, in which the textual words pronounced by the Pope are not quoted. No quotation of the aforementioned article must therefore be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father."
The article upset many on social media, with some calling for the pontiff to step down.
Then there was this in a more pleasant report by Catholic News Agency:
Peter Lombardi had hoped to meet Pope Francis during the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia in 2015 but those plans fell through when he was diagnosed with leukemia and was hospitalize.
But the boy got the ultimate thrill when the pope picked him out from the crowded square, gave him a kiss and a blessing and a ride twice around the square.
"I rode with him and he gave me a kiss and blessing," Peter said, per CNA.
Brenda Lombardi, Peter's mother, said Pope Francis's attention was more than the family could have ever hoped for.
"If the Pope could have just waved to him I would have been happy," Brenda Lombardi told CNA. "To thank our Lord for his healing and to thank the Blessed Mother; for their faithfulness, for their love and mercy upon our family.”
"God protected him throughout his leukemia. God's mercy is so infinite and his grace through the heavy crosses are even bigger and better in the end when you put your trust in him," she said.