Chega’s president wrote a letter to Pope Francis asking forgiveness for not being with him on World Youth Day (WYD), which took place in Lisbon earlier this month (between August 1 and 6).
In the letter, released this Tuesday by Correio da Manhã, André Ventura regrets not attending the Pope’s reception at the Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB) and apologizes for his absence.
On the first day in Portugal to participate in WYD, the Pope spoke at the CCB to political decision-makers, diplomats and figures of Portuguese culture and at that time Ventura was in Madeira campaigning for the September elections.
“I must confess that I could have been with His Holiness at the CCB and I did not want that meeting. I ask God to forgive me for that and I have had all the difficulties with my own conscience.” reads in the letter written by the leader of Chega to Pope Francis.
In the excerpts released by the newspaper, Ventura also criticizes the Catholic Church for behaving like a leftist party in the migration crisis and for, according to Chega’s leader, laundering corrupt political leaders such as Lula da Silva or Dilma Rousseff.
As early as October 2020, in the DN/TSF interview, the president of Chega criticized Pope Francis. “I think this pope has done Christianity a disservice. I think he has shown the revolutionary left almost as heroic and the European Marxist left as normalcy,” he began by saying.
“I think this pope helped destroy the very foundations of what the Catholic Church is in Europe and I think we’re all going to pay a little bit for that soon,” he said.
In the same interview, Ventura said he did not feel the support of the church hierarchy. “I didn’t even have to feel it,” he stated, before saying that he “felt the support of many priests, of many priests across the country, especially since the election to the Assembly of the Republic.”
Source: DN
