Pope Francis to journalists on board papal flight to US

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis spoke with reporters during the flight that took him from Cuba to the United States on Tuesday afternoon. Seàn-Patrick Lovett was on that flight and filed this report:

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I realise that in this high-speed communications world it’s stale news - and that you probably already know everything you need to know about what he said. But, just for the record, here’s the gist of what I heard during the papal Q&A that took place a few minutes after taking off from Santiago de Cuba yesterday - when, as promised, Pope Francis came back to the journalists’ section of the plane for the traditional end-of-trip in-flight press conference (even though, technically, this was the end of one trip and the start of another).

Overall, it seemed a bit like tying up loose ends since the questions clearly reflected everything the journalists would have liked to ask the Pope during the trip, but couldn’t. 

For example, whether or not he had met with, or ever intended meeting with, anti-Castro dissidents in Cuba (an issue that came up again during Fr Lombardi’s first press briefing in Washington). The Pope confirmed that he enjoys meeting everybody - but declined to provide what he called “hypothetical” details about what he might or might not have said to the dissidents had he met them. He also said he doesn’t usually give “audiences” to groups or individuals (a possible reference to the Argentine President who was in Havana at the time) when on a state visit. He did make some comments, though, about the Cuban Church’s contribution to the amnesty that saw the release of some 3,000 prisoners ahead of his arrival in the country – and how they are negotiating for more. He also mentioned how the Church is working to stop people being sentenced to life in prison in Cuba – something he described as “a kind of death penalty”.

Asked for more insights into his meeting with Fidel Castro and, specifically, if El Lider Maximo had shown any signs of “repentance” for past sins, the Pope insisted that conversion is an intimate matter of conscience. He did say that the two of them shared their concerns about the environment, discussed his recent encyclical, Laudato Sì, and reminisced about Jesuits they had known in common.

One key question, and especially pertinent to the U.S. stage of his trip, regarded criticism of him as being too “leftist”. His response was that he does nothing but repeat the social doctrine of the Church when he discusses anything - from the environment to economics.

Pope Francis even quoted someone as asking him if he thought the Church would follow him in his anti-capitalist positions. It is not the Church that follows me, he replied…”it is I who follow the Church”. And with regard to an article that asked the deliberately provocative question of whether or not the Pope is Catholic, he paused, chuckled, and said: “If you want me to recite the Creed, I will”!  

Travelling wth Pope Francis – I’m Seàn-Patrick Lovett