What are the worst sins a human can commit? Leader of the Catholic Church Pope Francis has said that sins of the flesh are not the most serious sins, including sex outside of marriage.
The answer came during a Q&A session with reporters who joined him on a flight from Greece to Italy. The most serious of sins, Pope Francis said, were pride and hatred.
The questions came following resignation of the Archbishop of Paris, who had offered publicly to step down early in December following an expose in a French magazine that he had had an intimate relationship with a woman.
The Archbishop, Michel Aupetit, denied the affair, saying that he was never actually intimate with the anonymous woman, and stating that he was aware that it would have broken his promise of celibacy. The archbishop offered a resignation nonetheless. The Pope accepted his resignation.
The Pope said, however, that it was not necessarily because of adultery or sex outside of marriage that he accepted the Archbishop’s resignation, but instead it was about injustice. The Pope continued that it was not on the alter of truth, but rather, of hypocrisy. He said that the rumors themselves were actually the damaging part and that when you weighed the sins against each other, lust was not actually the worst of them.
The Pope declared that it is not the gravest of sins to have an affair due to the situation with the Archbishop. He said that while the Archbishop’s actions may have failed against the Bible’s sixth commandment, which is that one shall not commit adultery, he continued that it was not a “total one,” and declared it one of a small action.
The Pope said that the Archbishop was condemned, but by whom? The public, and by gossip, and therefore, could no longer govern. Therefore his resignation was accepted, the Pope continued.
It’s the latest in the Pope weighing in on current affairs, as well as weighing in on matters related to the Catholic Church itself.
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