Pope Francis has described secularisation as a “complex phenomenon” and how the Church must “confront forms of paganism” within it.
His comments have come to light following his 28 September meeting with 150 of his brother Jesuits in Brussels, Belgium – one of Europe’s most secular and aggressively progressive countries – during which the pontiff answered a question from a Jesuit member living in Amsterdam, one of the most secularised cities in the world, reports Crux.
In his reply, which were published in La Civiltà Cattolica on 8 October, Francis noted that he didn’t mean a paganism like the one found in the ancient world, explaining:
