{"id":280,"date":"2018-04-02T16:19:19","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T15:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theoscience.org\/?p=280"},"modified":"2018-04-03T10:13:58","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T09:13:58","slug":"pope-says-even-atheists-can-go-to-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoscience.org\/index.php\/2018\/04\/02\/pope-says-even-atheists-can-go-to-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Says Even Atheists Can Go to Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Religion<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Date: May 29, 2013<\/p>\n<p>Source: National Public\u00a0Radio <b>(<\/b>NPR<b>)<\/b>; New York\u00a0Daily News<\/p>\n<p>Pope Francis stated that even atheists can go to Heaven so long as they are good people. The Pope stated this in a letter to <em>La Reppublica<\/em> as well as in a homily through Radio Vatican.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! &#8216;Father, the atheists?&#8217; Even the atheists. Everyone! . . .\u00a0 And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. . . . We must meet one another doing good. &#8216;But I don&#8217;t believe, Father, I am an atheist!&#8217; But do good: We will meet one another there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>These statements have serious implications on whether people need to be converted to Catholicism before they are saved. The view of the Catholic Church for centuries was that \u201coutside the Church there is no salvation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a letter to<em> La Reppublica<\/em>, the Pope wrote: \u201cGod\u2019s mercy has no limits, if you go to him with a sincere and repentant heart, the issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sources: National Public Radio (NPR); <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/parallels\/2013\/05\/29\/187009384\/Pope-Francis-Even-Atheists-Can-Be-Redeemed\">https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/parallels\/2013\/05\/29\/187009384\/Pope-Francis-Even-Atheists-Can-Be-Redeemed<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/news\/world\/pope-francis-atheists-heaven-article-1.1354151\">http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/news\/world\/pope-francis-atheists-heaven-article-1.1354151<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2013\/09\/11\/pope-francis-tells-atheists-to-obey-their-conscience\/\">https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2013\/09\/11\/pope-francis-tells-atheists-to-obey-their-conscience\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Religion Date: May 29, 2013 Source: National Public\u00a0Radio (NPR); New York\u00a0Daily News Pope Francis stated that even atheists can go to Heaven so long as they are good people. The Pope stated this in a letter to La Reppublica as well as in a homily through Radio Vatican. &#8220;The Lord has redeemed all of us, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/theoscience.org\/index.php\/2018\/04\/02\/pope-says-even-atheists-can-go-to-heaven\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Pope Says Even Atheists Can Go to Heaven&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[80,78,79,81,75,82],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religions","tag-atheist","tag-catholic-church","tag-christianity","tag-heaven","tag-pope-francis","tag-salvation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoscience.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoscience.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoscience.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoscience.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoscience.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theoscience.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325,"href":"https:\/\/theoscience.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoscience.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoscience.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoscience.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}