ROME — Pope Francis said Sunday that there is something diabolical about violence committed against women.
Appearing on an Italian television special titled “Francis and the Invisible People,” the pontiff had harsh words for domestic violence as well as prison sentences with no hope of parole.
“The number of women who are beaten and abused, even by their husbands, is very, very great” the pope said. “The problem is that for me it is almost satanic because it is taking advantage of the weakness of someone who cannot defend herself but can only shield herself from the blows.”
“It is humiliating, very humiliating,” he continued. “It is humiliating when a dad or mom slaps a child in the face, it’s very humiliating and I always say, never slap in the face. Why? Because a person’s face is his dignity.”
The program featured conversation between the pope and four people representing the “peripheries” he often refers to: a victim of domestic violence, a homeless woman, a convict serving life imprisonment, and an 18-year-old girl representing young people who felt abandoned during the coronavirus lockdowns.
Pope Francis greets a woman during an ecumenical prayer with migrants at the Roman Catholic church of the Holy Cross near the United Nations buffer zone in the Cypriot city of Nicosia, Europe’s last divided capital, on December 3, 2021. (ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP via Getty Images)
Francis denounced life sentences for criminals, insisting that there must always be hope of eventual freedom.
Prison without parole “is certainly a wall, it is not human!” the pope asserted. “Any conviction for a crime committed must have a hope, a window.”
“A prison without a window is wrong, it is a wall,” he continued. “A cell without a window is wrong. Not necessarily a physical window, but an existential window, a spiritual window.”
“To be able to say: ‘I know that I will get out, I know that I will be able to do this or that.’ This is why the Church is against the death penalty, because in death there is no window, there is no hope, a life is closed,” he said.
“There is hope on the other side, but there is none here,” he added. “This is why the prison must have a window.”
During the discussions, Francis insisted that “we are entering a culture of indifference where we try to distance ourselves from real problems, from the pain of the lack of housing, from a lack of work.”
“Indeed, with this pandemic, the problems have increased because loan sharks come knocking on the door offering to lend money,” he said. “A poor person, a person in need, falls into the hands of the loan sharks and loses everything, because they do not forgive.”
“It is cruelty on top of cruelty,” he said. “I say this to urge people not to be naïve: easy credit is not a way out of the problem; it brings you new problems.”
The pope also shared a tactic he uses when hearing confessions to make people more sympathetic to the plight of the poor.
“When I hear confessions I ask: ‘Do you help the poor?’ ‘Yes, I give alms,’ some say. ‘But when you give alms, do you place the money in the person’s hand or do you throw it without making contact?’ ‘I didn’t notice, I don’t know.’”
“‘When you give alms, do you look into the eyes of the poor person?’” he continued dramatizing. “Many say no. ‘With this alms that you give drily, mechanically, you discharge yourself of guilt. But it is not human.’”
“Instead, when you look a poor man in the face, your heart changes because it has reached the ‘sacrament of the poor,’” he said.
“Let’s say ‘sacramental’ so that nobody calls me a heretic,” he continued, “because the gaze of a poor person changes you.”