Pope Francis wants the Catholic Church to change the words of “The Lord’s Prayer” to make it clear that it is only Satan, not God, who can lead us into temptation.
- Scroll down or click here to vote in our poll of the day
The current wording of the prayer that begins “Our Father” asks God to “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The pope said in a television interview Wednesday that phrasing “is not a good translation" of ancient texts and appears to suggest that God induces temptation.
“A father does not push me into temptation, to see how I fell,” he told TV2000. “A father doesn’t do that. He helps you get up right away. What induces into temptation is Satan.”
TV2000 is an Italian-language TV station owned by the Italian conference of Roman Catholic bishops.
The prayer should ask, instead, for God’s help in avoiding temptation, he said. A better wording, he said, would be: "Do not let us fall into temptation.”
The French Catholic Church recently decided to use that phrase, switching from, “Ne nous soumets pas à la tentation” (“Do not expose us to temptation”) to: “Ne nous laisse pas entrer en tentation” (“do not allow us to give in to temptation”).
Pope Francis said that wording, or something similar, should be applied worldwide.
The interview (in Italian) is below:
