When Pope Francis received Eugenio Scalfari for a meeting at the Vatican last week, it was, Scalfari wrote later, a meeting of the leader of the Catholic church with "a non-believer who loves the human face of Jesus".
"The fact that I am a journalist does not interest him at all," the 90-year-old co-founder of La Repubblica wrote in a front-page article in the newspaper on Sunday. "I could be an engineer, a primary-school teacher, a worker."
Unfortunately for the pope, however, Scalfari is in fact a journalist – albeit one whose recounting of two separate conversations with Francis have now ended up clouded in uncertainty.
In the latest "interview", the pope was quoted as saying that about 2% of Catholic priests were paedophiles – an eye-catching line that was widely reported around the world.
But, not for the first time, there are questions surrounding what this freewheeling, ad-libbing pope actually said. And the Vatican is not happy.
In a statement issued within hours of the piece's publication, the Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, said: "As has happened previously in an analogous situation, it needs to be noted that that which Scalfari attributes to the pope, by putting his words into inverted commas, is the product of his memory as an expert journalist, but not the precise transcription of a recording."
Lombardi was referring to a previous instance in which Scalfari wrote up an encounter with Francis last October, which the Vatican later claimed was not altogether accurate. Questioned by fellow journalists, Scalfari was unable to mount a convincing defence, conceding he had not bothered to take notes during the interview, let alone record it. It was very possible, he added, that "some of the pope's words I reported were not shared by Pope Francis".
Despite this, however, contact between the pope and the celebrated "non-believer" appears to have continued, with Francis inviting Scalfari to his guesthouse on Vatican grounds last Thursday. In the resulting piece, Scalfari quoted the pope as discussing the "leprosy" of clerical child abuse, apparently saying: "Many of my aides … reassure me with reliable figures that estimate paedophilia within the church at the level of 2%. This figure should calm me, but I must tell you it does not calm me at all. Rather, I consider it very serious."
He is then said to add: "Two per cent of paedophiles are priests, and even bishops and cardinals."
Even if the quotes are accurate, it is unclear from the two remarks relating to the 2% exactly what the pope was trying to say. If the quotes as reported are not accurate, as the Vatican said on Sunday, it is still less clear.
Lombardi said that although the piece captured the general tone of the two men's conversation, "the individual expressions quoted, as they have been reported, cannot be attributed with certainty to the pope." In particular, he singled out a reported remark on priestly celibacy and the comment relating to cardinals being among the church's paedophiles.
In its Monday edition, La Repubblica did not dispute Lombardi's statement, noting the official denial but pointing out that allegations of abuse against some of the so-called "princes of the church" were not unknown.
Regardless of what the pope did or did not say, advocates for the victims of clerical sex abuse continue to argue that the church plays down the true scale of the problem. Barbara Dorris, outreach director of the Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, said on Sunday that BishopAccountability.org, a website that attempts to document abuse cases and apparent cover-ups, had figures suggesting that the proportion of US priests accused of abuse from 1950 until 2013 was about 5.6%.
"The real percentage of predator priests is of course much higher," Dorris said. "And in the far larger developing world – where the power imbalance between clergy and congregants is far greater and where bishops enjoy far more status and deference – we believe the rate is higher still. No one benefits when the world's top Catholic official mischaracterises the crisis by talking often about abuse and rarely about cover-up. No one benefits when he minimises the crisis, by low-balling estimates of child-molesting clerics."
The Vatican insists it is not low-balling the figures and that it has made great steps in tackling the problem. Last week Francis made his strongest condemnation yet of senior church figures, including bishops, who did not "respond adequately" to allegations of abuse by priests under their control.
