I can’t fault the pope for saying that to a boy. They are comforting words. Obviously no one knows if someone is in heaven, not even the pope.
Atheists can go to heaven. Knowing which ones do, is not for man to know, but for God to know and to determine.
Betting this gets deleted.
Wrong.
He didn’t just tell this to a boy. He went public and told the crowd. Which now has gone global.
I could understand if the Pope told a lie to a boy just to comfort him.
But to tell the whole world that atheists can go to Heaven?
Wrong.
There is just so much a spin team can cover before the smell of what you are covering up peeks through the sand. I can't believe this pope will be allowed to embarrass the church for one more year, let alone till he dies. Each time he says stuff like this, we are either told we didn't understand what he said, or we are just bashing the church, or they deny he said what he plainly said.
The problem is that this conversation should not find its way to the public. We don’t know how God will judge any individual soul. If a little boy came crying to me, telling me his father had died and that he had been an atheist and he feared his father hadn’t gone to Heaven, I’d tell him we should pray for his father’s soul. I’d say that God hears all prayers and that God exists outside of time, so he can apply those prayers retroactively. Perhaps the man cried out to God in his final moments and God saved him from Hell and now he’s in Purgatory and we can pray he moves quickly to Heaven. All of these are possible, and would be compassionate responses to a grieving child’s pleas. The problem is that this Pope makes sure the whole world hears about this exchange, so what the world is instructed is: it doesn’t matter whether you believe in God; as long as you’re a nice guy, you’ll go straight to Heaven.
If they still die as an atheist, those atheists will not be in Heaven. Former atheists who are believers will be in Heaven.