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Pope Francis, who died on Easter Monday, brought synodality back to the heart of the church. During his pontificate, Jorge Mario Bergoglio consistently upheld the Church’s priority of addressing the needs of the poor and invited Catholics worldwide to fully embrace a new theological paradigm, that of pastoral theology. Francis’s time at the helm of the Church was marked by two fundamental characteristics: a deep connection to the Second Vatican Council and the desire to bring the Church closer to the people. The Argentinian pope’s pontificate cannot be understood, Sigrid Müller claims, without seeing it as a continuation and development of Vatican II. The German theologian, teacher of Moral Theology at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Vienna, spoke exclusively with “O Clarim” about Pope Francis’  theological legacy. 

We all generally prefer to see ourselves as smart, generous, kind, patient, and forgiving people most of the time. But the truth is that we aren’t. Life isn’t ideal. We aren’t perfect. We simply cannot be nice and ‘good’ 100% of the time. If we’re honest with ourselves, we actually have some pretty scary and embarrassing flaws that we prefer to avoid at all costs.

Sin is moral evil, a bad human act, a failure in human self-realization, undue attachment to things and consequent detachment from God. Sins may rule our life and make us like slaves (Rom 3:9; 7:14). Indeed, “Everyone who commits a sin is a slave of sin” (Jn 8:34). Sin, grave sin is bad use of freedom. St. Augustine tells us in his Confessions that when he was in sin – when as a young man lived a loose life – , he had “the freedom of a run-away slave.” Sin is a betrayal of love that disrupts our relationship with God, with ourselves, with others and with nature (Vatican II, GS 13). From the sin of Adam and Eve, sin presents itself as promise, but it is no more than an illusion and a lie (A. Peteiro).