Live Screenshot
Source link:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-francis-assures-atheists-you-don-t-have-to-believe-in-god-to-go-to-heaven-8810062.htmlPublished by: INDEPENDENT on 11 Sep 2013
1425 views · Last view: 19 hrs ago
News Text (from INDEPENDENT)
Removed from bookmarks I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice In comments likely to enhance his progressive reputation, Pope Francis has written a long, open letter to the founder of La Repubblica newspaper, Eugenio Scalfaristating that non-believers would be forgiven by God if they followed their consciences.
Responding to a list of questions published in the paper by Mr Scalfari, who is not a Roman Catholic, Francis wrote: “You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don’t believe and who don’t seek the faith. I start by saying – and this is the fundamental thing – that God’s mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart. The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience.
“Sin, even for those who have no faith, exists when people disobey their conscience.”
Robert Mickens, the Vatican correspondent for the Catholic journal The [...]
To view the original News article, click here
Explore More
Who is Pope Francis?Pope Francis (born 1936) is the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State. Francis is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first pope from outside Europe since the Syrian Gregory III, who reigned in the 8th
Who are Independent?
What is Atheist?Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is the rejection of belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which, in its
most general form, is the belief that at least one deity exists.
What is Heaven?Heaven, or the Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. Heaven is often described as a 'highest place', the holiest place, a paradise, in contrast to
Hell or the Underworld or the 'low places' and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith, or other virtues or right beliefs or simply divine will.
Who is GOD?In monotheism and henotheism, God is conceived as the Supreme Being and principal object of faith. The concept of God as described by theologians commonly includes the attributes of omniscience (infinite knowledge), omnipotence (unlimited power), omnipresence (present everywhere), omnibenevolence
(perfect goodness), divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence.
<ul>
<li>In theism, God is the creator and sustainer of the universe</li>
<li>In deism, God is the creator, but not the sustainer, of the universe</li>
<li>Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one God or in the oneness of God</li>
<li>In pantheism, God is the universe itself</li>
<li>In atheism, God is purported not to exist, while deemed unknown or unknowable within the context of agnosticism. </li>
</ul>
