Pastoral plea for forgiveness on groundbreaking Pentecostals visit

ON MONDAY, Francis became the first Pope to visit a Pentecostal church, and apologised for fascist-era denunciations of Pentecostals by Catholics, writes Abigail Frymann Rouch.

Francis flew by helicopter to the under-construction Evangelical Church of Reconciliation in Caserta, 20 miles north of Naples. He told the Pentecostals that the same Holy Spirit who created unity in the Church was also the source of a “very rich and beautiful” diversity in it.

Speaking to between 200 and 300 Pentecostals from Italy, the US and Argentina in the church, Pope Francis referred to the time in Italy’s history when the practice of Pentecostal Christianity was forbidden. “Among those who persecuted Pentecostals, there were also Catholics,” he said. “I am the pastor of Catholics, and I ask your forgiveness,” he went on.

“Some will be surprised: ‘The Pope went to visit the Evangelicals?’ But he went to see his brothers,” Francis said.

The church’s pastor, the Revd Giovanni Traettino, a close friend of the Pope, told him that the visit, which followed a request from the Italian Evangelical community, was “unthinkable until recently”.