As a rule of thumb, I’m skeptical of all third-party stories about Pope Francis unless I know from experience that the source is reliable or I can verify the facts directly at the Vatican news website. Even the best journalists and the Vatican Press Office make mistakes, but if you adopt the same policy, at least you won’t find yourself forwarding urban legends about the Pope to all and sundry.

Real Misquotes

At The Christian Post, Ligonberry Fields has compiled the seven biggest misquotes of Pope Francis’s first two years. Some of the misquotes are due to simple religious illiteracy — Pope says atheists don’t need Jesus! — or wrenching  a statement out of context — Pope has no problem with homosexual priests! Others, such as the story of a “Third Vatican Council” in which Pope Francis supposedly denies basic Christian doctrines, are urban legends that started on a satirical website and then went viral.

I would add to Ligonberry’s list the stories based on mistranslations from Spanish or Italian to English, such as the story last October when Francis supposedly said that “God is not a divine being.” (That’s not what he said.)

Still Kinda Confusing

Once we account for media bias and religious illiteracy, bad translations and urban legends, however, there is still a fact that we might as well admit: Pope Francis’s casual comments can be confusing. Unlike Saint Pope John Paul II, a Polish philosopher, and Pope Benedict XVI, a German theologian, Pope Francis’s public persona is that of a simple pastor who relates extraordinary theological truths in ordinary language for ordinary people. That’s a good thing, but stir in the media tendency to misquote or misrepresent what he says, and you’ve got a recipe for utter confusion.

Take the recent dust-up from Pope Francis’s recent visit to the Philippines. During a press conference on a flight from Sri Lanka to Manila, a French journalist asked the Pope a question about freedom of religion and freedom of speech.  The context was the murder of some seventeen people by radical Islamists in protest against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published cartoons of Muhammad. Pope Francis condemned murder in the name of God, but according to Vatican Radio, he went on:

The Pope said if “his good friend Dr. Gasparri” says a curse word against his mother, he can “expect a punch,” and at that point he gestured with a pretend punch towards him, saying, “It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”

Many media outlets took him to mean that there should be laws against criticizing religion. Others thought he seemed to be condoning violence or “blaming the victims.”

These interpretations were uncharitable, but they weren’t cases of blatant media bias.  His statement was baffling. Take the last sentence quoted above: “You cannot make fun of the faith of others.” That verb choice, “cannot,” is confusing. He can’t have meant that one literally cannot make fun of the faith of others, since anyone who can speak a language is capable of mocking another person’s faith.

Did he mean that if you insult someone’s faith, you should expect to get hit for it? Surely not, but that’s not exactly a forced interpretation of his words. Or was he saying that one ought not ridicule the faith of others? A Spanish friend tells me that in Spanish “cannot” can serve as an intensifier of “ought not.” Maybe that’s what’s going on. I want to believe that Pope Francis meant that we should not mock another person’s religious faith, but it would have been much easier to settle on that interpretation if he had used a different verb.

In response, the Vatican Press Office had to issue a clarification — a tacit admission that the statement wasn’t clear. “The Pope’s expression is in no way intended to be interpreted as a justification for the violence and terror that took place in Paris last week,” said Fr. Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesman. “The Pope’s words about Dr. Gasparri were spoken colloquially and in a friendly, intimate matter among colleagues and friends on the journey.”

In yet another long press conference on the plane from Manila back to Rome, the Pope made another perplexing comment. And when asked about his earlier statement on free speech, he offered a less-than-clear clarification.

Rules of Thumb

So maybe we need to refine our rules of thumb for all stories about Pope Francis: (1) Doubt the source unless you know it is reliable, (2) check the official Vatican website, and (3) if the reported statement is a casual remark among friends, uttered during a long press conference, don’t expect measured exactness. There is a trade-off between analytic precision and congenial informality, and when the Pope speaks off-the-cuff, he clearly prefers the latter.

Jay Richards is Executive Editor of The Stream.