[Jeff Chandler]

If we live according to the law of ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’, we cannot come out of the spiral of evil.

That is an ignorant (I will give him the benefit of the doubt and won't accuse him of being disingenuous) understanding of ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’. That law was intended to circumscribe punishment, but he is presenting it as an encouragement of revenge.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Jeff, you are quite right in saying that the intent of "an eye for an eye" was to limit punishment to exact retribution (not the famous Mafia axiom: "You put one of our guys in the hospital, we'll put one of yours in the morgue.")

But Christ Himself superseded the Mosaic "an eye for an eye" in the fifth of the Six Antitheses(in Matthew 5). I think Pope Francis is pointing out the superiority of the Christian perspective to the Mosaic.