VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service
By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service
5.17.2016
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Governments work best when they are secular, not confessional, but they must give ample space for people to express their religious beliefs, including by respecting the right of conscientious objection, Pope Francis told the French Catholic newspaper La Croix.
While legislatures must “discuss, argue, explain (and) reason” about legal solutions to complex issues, including euthanasia and same-sex marriage, “once a law has been adopted, the state must also respect consciences,” the pope said in the interview published May 16. “The right to conscientious objection must be recognized within each legal structure because it is a human right — including for a government official, who is a human person.”
National governments, he said, “must be secular. Confessional states end badly.” …
The journalists also asked Pope Francis about a case of clerical sexual abuse that has “shattered” Catholics in the Archdiocese of Lyon where a priest, who ran a large Catholic school, has been charged with “sexual aggression and rape of minors” between 1986 and 1991.
“It is not easy to judge the facts decades later in a different context,” Pope Francis said, but “there can be no statute of limitations for the church in this field. … As Benedict XVI said, there must be zero tolerance.”
An association of the priest’s victims have filed a lawsuit against Lyon Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, accusing him of failing to act to stop the abusive priest. “Based on the information that I have, I believe that Cardinal Barbarin in Lyon took the necessary measures and that he has matters under control,” Pope Francis said.
The pope said he believed that Cardinal Barbarin resigning would be “a contradiction, imprudent” while the case is still under study because “would amount to an admission of guilt.”
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