Madrid (EFE).- The journalist Jordi Évole has assured Efe that “sometimes we want to demand things from the Pope that cannot be demanded of him”, alluding to the position of Pope Francis against abortion and women’s access to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, issues that he talks about in the program “Amen, Francisco responds”, which premieres this Wednesday on Disney +.
Although on a personal level “I would have appreciated another message”, Évole maintains that asking the Pope for that is very complicated. “I would make an amendment to the whole part of what the institution has said about him throughout history, it is as if the PP said yes to the right of self-determination.”
Co-directed by Évole and Màrius Sánchez, his regular partner, the program shows the meeting between the Argentine pontiff and a group of ten young people between the ages of 20 and 25 of different origins in a collaborative work space in the alternative Roman neighborhood of Pigneto.
There are believers, atheists and a Muslim; there is a victim of sexual abuse in an Opus Dei center, a girl who is dedicated to Internet porn, an activist in favor of abortion, an anti-abortion Catholic.
“There is no world leader, neither moral, nor ethical, nor political, nor social, nor economic, nor journalistic who would lend himself to an experiment like that, we are very satisfied,” said Évole, who met the Pope as a result of the interview that he did for television in 2019 and since then he has kept in touch with him.
The Catalan journalist explains that from the beginning there was harmony between them. “We did not fall into a reverential treatment, in an enormous solemnity and we saw that he felt very comfortable with that type of language”, he affirms, which gave rise to an epistolary relationship, by email, which they maintain to this day.
“We asked him how he was (after his hospitalization last week due to bronchitis), and he sent us yesterday in his own handwriting that he was scared, but that he was doing very well,” he explains. “At some point we made a joke with him about whether it would be a posthumous program, luckily it hasn’t been,” she adds to show the ironic tone they use between them.
According to Évole and Sánchez, Pope Francis did not put red lines when filming this meeting, which took place in June of last year, although he did ask, half jokingly, that there be at least one Catholic and he did not censor anything when they showed him the final assembly.
One of the culminating moments occurs when one of the boys, named Juan, exposes the pontiff that he suffered abuse by an Opus Dei numerary, that the Vatican archived the case and that it did not prevent that person from continuing to teach.
According to Évole, the case has now been reopened. “The Pope says that it is a type of crime that he cannot prescribe, at least for the Church, and he has reopened the case, we hope that the sentence is different and not the one that person had.”
In his opinion, the pontiff has made a big gamble when it comes to tackling this problem. “I think his determination is absolute, when we told him that we were going to deal with him in the program at no time did he object, I think he is taking the bull by the horns.”
Another delicate moment comes when a young Argentine, Catholic and feminist, gives the pope a green handkerchief, a symbol of the mobilizations in favor of the legalization of abortion in Argentina.
Màrius assures that Francisco took it with him after the meeting. “It has a very strong symbology that an Argentine girl gives that handkerchief to an Argentine pope,” he points out.
Both Évole and Màrius stress the importance of filming taking place outside the Vatican, something that helped the boys feel more comfortable.
The documentary starts in the Vatican premises and shows Francisco drinking coffee and in his office, and then getting into a car heading to the Pigneto neighborhood.
