Pope Francis has delivered another criticism of some members of his own church , suggesting it was better to be an atheist than one of many Catholics who he said lead a hypocritical double life.<\/p>\n
In improvised comments in the sermon of his private morning mass in his residence, he said: \u201cIt is a scandal to say one thing and do another. That is a double life.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are those who say, \u2018I am very Catholic, I always go to mass, I belong to this and that association\u2019,\u201d the head of the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic church said, according to a Vatican Radio transcript.<\/p>\n
He said some of these people should also say \u201c\u2018my life is not Christian, I don\u2019t pay my employees proper salaries, I exploit people, I do dirty business, I launder money, [I lead] a double life\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are many Catholics who are like this and they cause scandal,\u201d he said. \u201cHow many times have we all heard people say \u2018if that person is a Catholic, it is better to be an atheist\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since his election in 2013, Francis has often told Catholics, both priests and lay people, to practise what their religion preaches.<\/p>\n
In his often impromptu sermons, he has condemned sexual abuse of children by priests as being tantamount to a \u201csatanic mass\u201d, said Catholics in the mafia excommunicate themselves, and told his own cardinals to not act \u201cas if they were princes\u201d.<\/p>\n
Less than two months after his election, he said Christians should see atheists as good people if they do good.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pope Francis has delivered another criticism of some members of his own church , suggesting it was better to be an atheist than one of many Catholics who he said lead a hypocritical double life. In improvised comments in the sermon of his private morning mass in his residence, he said: \u201cIt is a scandal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[4359,4360,4361,4362],"class_list":["post-296728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-atheist","tag-catholic-church","tag-ghana-catholic-church","tag-pope-francis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=296728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=296728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=296728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=296728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}