POPE FRANCIS has said that he “respects” the decision of the US Supreme Court last week to overturn Roe v. Wade, which means that abortion has been outlawed across swaths of the United States (News, 1 July).
During an interview with the Reuters news agency in the Vatican on Saturday, the Pope said of the ruling: “I tell you the truth. I don’t understand it from a technical point of view. . . I have to study it, because I don’t really understand [the details of] the ruling 50 years ago and now I can’t say whether it did right or wrong from a judicial point of view.”
He added, however: “I respect the decisions.”
Pope Francis also repeated his condemnation of abortion, comparing it to “hiring a hit man”. He said: “I ask: Is it legitimate, is it right, to eliminate a human life to resolve a problem?”
Asked whether a Roman Catholic politician who was personally in favour of abortion, such as Nancy Pelosi, should receive holy communion (News, 27 May), he said: “When the Church loses its pastoral nature, when a bishop loses his pastoral nature, it causes a political problem. That is all I can say.”
In a wide-ranging interview, conducted in Italian, Pope Francis, who is 85, dismissed reports that he was preparing for retirement. Rumours have been escalated in part through a series of events due to take place in late August, including a meeting of the cardinals to discuss the new Vatican constitution (News, 25 March), a ceremony to induct new cardinals, and a visit to the Italian city of L’Aquila, which is associated with Pope Celestine V, who resigned the papacy in 1294. (Pope Benedict XVI visited the city four years before he resigned in 2013, the first pope to do so in about 600 years.)
Pope Francis said: “All of these coincidences made some think that the same ‘liturgy’ would happen, but it never entered my mind. For the moment, no.”
He did not, however, rule out retirement owing to ill-health. “We don’t know. God will say.”
Asked about his knee pain, which has caused him mobility issues, and prevented his planned visit to the DRC and South Sudan this week (News, 4 July), the Pope said that he had suffered a “small fracture” in his knee after stumbling while a ligament was already inflamed. The injury had been treated by laser and magnet therapy. “I am well. I am slowly getting better,” he said.
He also denied reports that he had been diagnosed with cancer last year, when he underwent a six-hour operation to remove part of his colon because of diverticulitis. The operation, he said, had been “a great success”.
He was confident that he would visit Canada later this month.
Pope Francis, who has been outspoken in his condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (News, 17 June), said that he would also like to visit both capital cities, but “wanted to go to Moscow first. We exchanged messages about this because I thought that if the Russian President gave me a small window, [I might] serve the cause of peace. . . And now it is possible, after I come back from Canada, it is possible that I manage to go to Ukraine. The first thing is to go to Russia to try to help in some way, but I would like to go to both capitals.”