Vatican City, Jan 24, 2020 / 09:40 am (CNA).- After an hour long meeting with Pope Francis Jan. 24, Vice President Mike Pence sat down with EWTN News to discuss their conversation. Here is CNA’s transcript of that interview:
EWTN News: Mr. Vice President, you spent about an hour with the Holy Father, Pope Francis, today and what did you discuss?
Pence: Well, it was a great privilege for me to spend time with Pope Francis and to be able to do so on a day that literally hundreds of thousands of Americans, including many Catholic Americans, are gathered on our National Mall in Washington D.C. standing up for the right to life, was a particular joy for me. And to hear his passion for the sanctity of life, and to hear the American Bishops were coming to him this month and speaking about their determination to see the Church in the United States continue as it has always done to stand without apology for the sanctity of human life. It was a great privilege.
EWTN News: How can the U.S. government work together with the Holy See in the entire world to promote the sanctity of life and work against abortion and also euthanasia?
Pence: Well, I believe that the Church in the U.S. has been a bulwark in the right to life movement since Roe v Wade was first adopted by our Supreme Court in 1973. In fact, on the National Mall today, among those hundreds of thousands of young people, will be an enormous number of Catholic youth.
They will be waving their banners of their parishes, they’ll be waving the banners of their Catholic schools, and I think continuing to educate young people about the unalienable right to life, and the fact that every child is a gift from God has been the contribution that the Church has made to this cause, and the truth is in the U.S. we see more young people everyday embracing the right to life. The numbers are growing.
I know the Church is playing a critical role in that and I know will continue to until we reach that day that we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law and will carry that message throughout the world.
EWTN News: You’ve personally been involved with many Marches for Life now, Mr. Vice President. Why have you taken this on as your sort of personal campaign as well?
Pence: Well, for my wife and me to stand for life in the public square is a calling. It’s a calling of our convictions, it’s a calling of our faith. We think it is the most pressing moral issue of our time.
And throughout our years in congress, and as Governor, and now as Vice President, I’ve sought to stand for the right to life and to stand with all of those who cherish the unborn.
But I have to tell you, I couldn’t be more proud to be Vice President to the most Pro-Life president in American history. As we gather here in Rome today, President Trump will go to the National Mall and be the first American president to ever address the March for Life in person. And that’s no real surprise when you see President Trump’s record for life, whether it be ending the Mexico City Policy, ending the providing funding for organizations that promote or support abortion around the world, defunding the largest abortion provider in America, or appointing principled conservatives to our courts.
One step after another, President Donald Trump has stood consistently for the right to life, and I expect the warm reception that he’ll get today from those hundreds of thousands of people gathered on our National Mall will reflect the fact that people all across America know in President Donald Trump they have a champion for life.
EWTN News: Going back to your meeting with Pope Francis today, did you speak about the tensions between the United States and Iran? He has spoken about this and has invited both parties to dialogue.
Pence: Today in my discussions with Pope Francis, we spoke about a number of issues, including the Pope’s great concern for Christian and religious minorities in Iraq and across the Nineveh Plain. I told the Pope that we are very proud to work with many Catholic charities as we work to rebuild Christian communities that were so set upon through ISIS and terrorist action in the region in recent years.
We’ve really partnered with the Knights of Columbus and other organizations across the region to make it possible for those Christian communities to come back and to have vibrant communities, not only Christian, but Yazidi communities, and the Pope shared with me his great passion for [the issue of] religious persecution and for religious minorities across the Middle East. We also then talked about Venezuela.
Pope Francis is a son of South America, and I wanted to better understand his insight about how we can together work as a global community to help restore democracy for the people of Venezuela. As I stand here today, the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro has impoverished their country, nearly 5 million people have fled Venezuela to neighboring countries, the poverty and deprivation there in what was once one of the wealthiest countries in our hemisphere is tragedy.
I sought Pope Francis’ counsel about how we can work more closely with him and with the Church in Venezuela and across South and Central America to really continue to bring the kind of pressure to bear from the ground up that will make it possible for the people of Venezuela to have a new birth of freedom. The reality is that the National Assembly has named Juan Guaidó now more than a year ago as the interim president, and democracy is waiting in the wings in Venezuela, but it will take all of us and I trust the consistent and courageous voice of the Church in Venezuela to see liberty restored.
EWTN News: You said yesterday in Israel that you invited states to stand together against this rise of anti-Semitism worldwide. Pope Francis has often spoken out against anti-Semitism…
Pence: He has.
EWTN News:… as well. How do you see that the US and Europe and the world can take concrete steps forward against anti-Semitism?
Pence: Well, first it’s so important that we remember the past, so as not to relive it in the future. And yesterday in Jerusalem, it was my great privilege to be there as we mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and to see nearly 60 world leaders come together to mark what was not only the darkest chapter in human history but to really…to mark a triumph of freedom 75 years ago was deeply moving. But what was equally impressive was the universal call by all those present to condemn anti-Semitism in all of its forms.
And the truth is that we are seeing vile anti-Semitism rear its head in both rhetoric and violence across the world.
We’ve seen synagogues attacked in the United States of America, Jewish communities attacked around the world, and we believe as we said yesterday that it’s imperative that leaders around the world and in the faith community and in the public sphere condemn anti-Semitism without reservation every time it emerges. And also in the midst of that that we stand together against the leading state purveyor of anti-Semitism on the planet: the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Iran actually today, as a state position denies the Holocaust ever happened or routinely says that its aim is to wipe Israel off the map. It’s important, particularly in the light of our action against Iran and a military leader just a month ago that the world continue to isolate Iran economically and diplomatically, and President Trump is going to continue to lead that charge.
We cannot allow the leading state sponsor of terrorism with so much enmity toward Israel to ever have a nuclear weapon, and we will continue to stand strong, and we will continue to work to bring the world community together, but stopping anti-Semitism wherever it emerges must be a priority of every nation in the world, and we need only to look to that dark chapter 75 years ago to know how dangerous anti-Semitism is and how it is a moral imperative in this century to see to it that it is condemned and rejected wherever it’s expressed.
EWTN News: Thank you so much, Mr. Vice President.
Pence: Thank you.
This interview will air on EWTN News Nightly, Jan. 24, 2020.
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I ask this question with utter seriousness: is it the Pope’s to give away such relics and these relics in particular? Could he also conceivably give away any painting or sculpture? Do they belong to the papacy, Bergoglio or the Catholic Church? Could he conceivably (in a state of derangement?) transfer the Blessed Sacrament to Constantinople in a gesture towards unity?
I ask based on this scene in the article by Diana Montagna/Life Site News:
” ‘When we entered the chapel,’ the Orthodox archbishop said, ‘Pope Francis explained to me that Pope Paul VI wanted to keep a part of the relics of St. Peter from the Vatican Basilica in his private chapel.'”
“The Pope told him:’I no longer live in the Apostolic Palace, I never use this chapel, I never [celebrate] Holy Mass here, and we have St. Peter’s relics in the basilica itself, so it will be better if they will be kept in Constantinople.”
“ ‘This is my gift to the Church of Constantinople,” the Pope added, as he handed over the relics.’Please take this reliquary and give it to my brother Patriarch Bartholomew.’ ”
So in other words based on his own living arrangements, where he celebrates Mass, his own rationale and who is “brother” is (friend?)…and he does so despite all the politics in the Orthodox world, Russian Church etc…and those poor Uniates…he gives these relics of the Church as his? gift to be taken to a country dominated by Islam?
Again I ask a naïve question…but is Bergoglio as Pope able to simply decide to give away these relics as “my (his) gift?
Bergoglio: “I…I…I..I…my…my…”
The monstrous ego of this man is apparent yet again, in a completely destructive and contemptuous act. He positively hates the Church, which he believes he has inherited as his own personal property. Not only can he give away Her material possessions, but Her moral and spiritual treasures are his to dispose of as well. He hands over moral teaching and authority without a thought. If the end of the world is delayed long enough, a future pope will pronounce anathema on Bergoglio, there is no doubt about it.
So tired of Francis and his continued betrayal of the Church and the Faith.
Please God, let this trainwreck of a Pontificate come to an end.
Totally agree with the previous posters. Popes who have done this kind of thing – as Paul VI & JP2 also did – are acting in a passive-aggressive way, that shows that as far as they are concerned the CC is garbage now, and always was garbage. They may not intend that message, but that is what is conveyed.
This latest incident does not stand alone. It is part of a pattern. The “trainwreck” is the continual substitution of personal ego by successive Popes, in place of the Sacred Tradition of the Church. Popes are not free to jettison it – they are subject to it, and are supposed to guard it inviolate, and to interpret it faithfully. They are not above it, but are subject to it. The egotism of the Popes since Paul VI is, from one POV, an example of what can happen when an Ultramontane Papacy becomes a law unto itself.
IMO, these men will in due time be as denounced as antipopes – though some of their acts could be accepted as Catholic. It is less of a problem to say there has been a lengthy vacancy in the Papacy, than to accept unCatholic novelties and false teaching as orthodox Catholicism.