That odd declaration came after the newspaper La Repubblica published a front-page article on Thursday by an atheist, left-wing and anticlerical giant of Italian journalism, who reported that during a recent meeting the pope had said that hell did not exist.

Bad souls are "not punished," the journalist, Eugenio Scalfari, 93, reported the pope as saying. "A hell doesn't exist."

Nor, for Mr Scalfari, does a tape recorder or notebook or the orthodoxy of quotation marks.

The Vatican characterized the remarks as misquotations.

In the past, Mr Scalfari, the founder of La Repubblica, a bible of the Italian left that he edited for decades, has admitted to sometimes putting words in the papal mouth.

But the infernal remarks, especially as the pope prepared for Easter Sunday celebrations, proved too tempting for international tabloids, conservative websites antagonistic to the pope and many others to let go.

"Pope Declares No Hell," read a screaming headline across the Drudge Report website.

"Does the Pope Believe in Hell?" asked Patrick J Buchanan in an online column.

"Vatican literally falls apart after Pope Francis says ‘Hell doesn't exist,'" read a headline in Metro UK, a British newspaper.

The pope, in fact, has often talked about hell as a very real final destination for the wicked, and the Vatican made clear that the "literal words pronounced by the pope are not quoted" and that "no quotation of the article should be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father."

Mr Scalfari agreed.

"They are perfectly right," said Mr Scalfari in an interview on Friday night, as the pope prepared for a ceremonial leading of the stations of the cross on Good Friday. "These are not interviews, these are meetings, I don't take notes. It's a chat."

While Mr Scalfari said he remembered the pope saying hell did not exist, he allowed that "I can also make mistakes."

He said he had committed an error of omission by failing to fully explain the pope's answer on the need for a stronger Europe.

"At my age," Mr Scalfari said, he was more used to being interviewed than interviewing.

The editor of La Repubblica, Mario Calabresi, said the paper had not labeled Mr Scalfari's piece as an interview.

It was, Mr Calabresi said, the fruit of a "cultural exchange and dialogue out of the 19th century between a Jesuit believer and a man of the enlightenment fascinated by religion."

Sophisticated readers of Italian journalism understand how to read Mr Scalfari, which is to say, with a grain of salt when it comes to papal quotations.

To many here, Mr Scalfari personifies an impressionistic style of Italian journalism, prevalent in its coverage of the Vatican, politics and much else, in which the gist is more important than the verbatim, and the spirit greater than the letter.

And yet, despite the public relations headaches Mr Scalfari has caused, Francis, 81, seems to like talking to him.

The pope, Mr Scalfari said, has a "need to talk with a nonbeliever who stimulates him." This month's meeting was their fifth. Continue reading

• Image: NYT

Experienced Vatican correspondent Marco Ansaldo will be forced to seek alternative transport to cover the visit.

The sanction comes as punishment for his newspaper's role in breaching an embargo on the Pope's encyclical Laudato Si' last month.

La Repubblica, a left-leaning daily, came under criticism from the Vatican when its media conglomerate, L'Espresso, published an advance copy of the encyclical.

The Vatican reacted by banning the L'Espresso journalist responsible for the leak, Sandro Magister, from the Vatican press office indefinitely.

La Repubblica said the latest sanction went too far.

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In a letter to Cardinal George Pell, prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, an official of the Vatican governate reported the purchases.

Cardinals serving at the Vatican have been receiving a 20 per cent discount on cigarettes at the Vatican supermarket, as well as other discounts, the report showed.

The Italian daily La Repubblica, which obtained a copy of the account, said that some cardinals give away the cigarettes they purchase.

Other prelates said that they had never used the discounts.

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On July 13, Rome daily La Repubblica ran an article by its former editor Eugenio Scalfari, based on an interview he did with the Pope on July 10.

The Pope reportedly described the abuse of children in the Church as "leprosy".

"Many collaborators on my side provided me [with] reliable data which estimate a rate of two per cent of paedophilia within the Catholic Church," the Pope reportedly told the 90-year-old Scalfari.

The Roman Pontiff stressed that "this data should reassure me, but it does not. I find it very grave".

"Two per cent of paedophiles are priests and even bishops and cardinals," the Pope continued.

The low number does not mean it is not a serious problem, the Pope said, adding that there is more abuse taking place, but victims are not reporting it.

Pope Francis said he would address the issue "with the severity required".

Speaking on priestly celibacy, the Pope reportedly told Scalfari that it "was established in the tenth century, 900 years after Our Lord's death", adding that "the priests of Eastern Catholic Church are already allowed to marry".

"There is a problem, but it is not a great deal. Time is needed, but there are solutions, and I will find them," Pope Francis reportedly said.

Soon after the article appeared, Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi said Scalfari had been working from memory, not from a recorded interview.

This is Scalfari's admitted practice, even with Pope Francis.

While agreeing the article conveyed the "sense and spirit" of the conversation, Fr Lombardi said two statements in particular cannot be attributed to the Pope.

"That is when the Pope says that there are cardinals amongst the ranks of paedophile priests and also when he says in relation to the question of priestly celibacy that he ‘will find a solution'," Fr Lombardi explained.

The Vatican spokesman questioned whether Scalfari was trying to manipulate naive readers.

This is the third meeting between Scalfari, who is a non-believer, and Pope Francis.

Sources

• The Irish Times
• New York Daily News
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Catholic World Report

On April 20, Italian daily La Repubblica reported that the cardinal was moving into a lavish 6500 square foot apartment in the Vatican's San Carlo Palace.

This was while Pope Francis was urging clerics to adopt a modest lifestyle.

But in an open letter in Italian magazines, Cardinal Bertone wrote that he had been contacted by the Pope, who had expressed his personal support.

The cardinal wrote that the apartment is of a typical size for Vatican palaces and that media doubled the size of the apartment he is going to live in.

He renovated it at his own expense, he added.

The restructuring combines two separate apartments.

Three nuns who worked with Cardinal Bertone when he was secretary of state will live with him in his new residence.

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On the subject of Church leaders, he said: "You know what I think about this? Heads of the Church have often been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers. The court is the leprosy of the papacy."

The interview with Eugenio Scalfari, the atheist editor of La Repubblica, followed a long letter the Pope sent the paper in September, in response to an editorial.

Then the Pope followed up with a phone call, suggesting a meeting.

Scalfari said the two joked about whether one wanted to convert the other, and the Pope said: "Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us."

When Scalfari observed that some priests make him anti-clerical, the Pope replied sympathetically: "It also happens to me that when I meet a clericalist, I suddenly become anti-clerical. Clericalism should not have anything to do with Christianity."

Questioned about the problems facing the Church today, Pope Francis answered: "The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old. The old need care and companionship; the young need work and hope but have neither one nor the other, and the problem is they don't even look for them any more. They have been crushed by the present.

"You tell me: can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing."

Francis also revealed he had an unusual spiritual experience just after the conclave elected him.

As he fought off anxiety and doubt, the Pope recalls, "I closed my eyes and I no longer had any anxiety or emotion. At a certain point I was filled with a great light. It lasted a moment, but to me it seemed very long."

Sources:

La Repubblica

Reuters

Image: Catholic Online