Who is the priest in the video promoting interreligious dialogue?
On January 13, 2016, on his blog Settimo Cielo [Seventh Heaven], the Vatican-watcher Sandro Magister identified the priest who was featured in the Pope’s interreligious video on January 6. (See DICI no. 328 dated January 15, 2016) In it we see a Buddhist, a Jew, a Muslim and a Catholic priest, with the symbols of their respective beliefs—all the religions appear on equal footing.
Who is the priest that was recruited for that video?
“It is the Argentine Guillermo Marcó, whom Jorge Mario Bergoglio knows very well, since the former was his official spokesman when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. In late 2006, however, Bergoglio had to fire him following a communications disaster.
“While being interviewed by Newsweek after the memorable speech by Benedict XVI in Regensburg [on September 12, 2006, Editor’s note], Marcó let loose with some rather harsh invective against Joseph Ratzinger’s remarks about Islam: ‘He destroyed in twenty seconds what it had taken twenty years to build with Islam. What he said does not represent my views.’
“Father Marcó did not disappear from the scene, however, and he maintained close ties with Bergoglio, both before and after the latter’s election as Pope, as demonstrated today by his reappearance alongside Pope Francis in the first of the new videos of The Apostolate of Prayer.
“We do not know, however, what Francis thinks about what Fr. Marcó wrote several days ago, on January 13, in the supplement Valores Religiosos [Religious Values] of the major Argentine newspaper El Clarin. Fr. Marcó starts by rewriting the parable of the prodigal son, asserting that he goes back home ‘not because he repented, but out of necessity’. And that is enough to make his father embrace him, without waiting for him to convert.
“But then, most importantly, he proposes that the Pope ‘revise the practice of the sacrament of confession’ because, for too many centuries, he writes, ‘the Church has threatened sinners with all sorts of punishments, in this life and in eternal life, especially for private sins and, more specifically, those connected with the free exercise of pleasure and sexuality.’ His proposal to the Pope is as follows: limit recourse to the sacrament of Penance ‘for sins of public scandal only’, as, according to him, ‘the Church did until the twelfth century’—and for private behavior ‘to allow more freedom to the believer in his relationship with God, so that in the interior forum he can discern good and evil.’” (At the end of the interreligious video, Fr. Marcó exclaims in a voice that attempts to sound inspired: “I believe in love.” One may legitimately wonder what sort of love he is talking about. Editor’s note.)
And Sandro Magister concludes: “It is easy to imagine that Fr. Marcó already puts [this reform of Confession] into practice. Without fear or regrets.”
(Source: Settimo Cielo – English translation directly from Italian; DICI no. 329 dated January 29, 2016)