Read the full article at Heaven open to all, Francis says
A bit similar to George MacDonald’s The Hope for the Universe.
Very cool! Thanks for sharing this, Alex. If all the RCs take the Pope seriously, that’s the largest third of Christianity become universalists! YAY!!!
Indeed 
There was a related urban legend going around that was similar to the above article but this is legit as far as I can tell e.g. article actually quotes
w2.vatican.va/content/francesco … erale.html
I really like this new pope and all his incentives so far. The animal comment reminded me of the Twilight Zone episode The Hunt
I think there is a danger that we can read into it what we want to read.
Let me quote from his written communication:
Two camps: those who are ‘in Christ’ and those who are ‘not’ , those who are saved and those who are not.
Nothing here, move along, move along…
The Roman Catholic Church is slow to change. I remember talking to an Russian Orthodox priest one time. He said that the Orthodox Church could declare a person a saint in this life. They don’t have a formal saint approval process, like the Roman Catholic Church. It has taken them this long to “include Protestants” in the salvation mix - as his current speech reflects. And only after Vatican II, did they come out with some form of inclusivism. They are much slower to change then folks in the Protestant and Eastern Orthodox worlds. And they still haven’t changed on issues like artificial birth control (i.e. RC priests usually advise practitioners to invoke their conscience on this issue), whereas clergy and laity in the Protestant and Eastern Orthodox worlds, are much freer on there usage.
I agree with Pilgrim – we can see that what he’s saying adds up to UR, but I don’t think he thinks he’s doing that. He’s just taking the C. S. Lewis position.
But he’s getting closer to UR all the time.
It’s also possible that he has intentionally phrased it to not be UR while intentionally putting the UR math together for anyone who wants to see it. I think there’s a reasonable theory that, largely thanks to Balthasar and the Polish Divine Mercy saint (and becoming fans of Lewis, and that overtly UR RC convert from EOx who was also Polish whose name I can’t recall or spell at the moment, etc.), the Popes since Vatican 2 have been convinced of UR (with Benedict being more agnostic about it perhaps) and have been engaged in a decades-long plan to bring the RCC to the point where they can allow UR officially though not insist upon it dogmatically (as a doctrinal marker for being in communion or not), in other words where the EOx technically are.
This would also be hugely connected with their attempts at reforging primitive catholic unity, reaching out and reconciling with the Eastern Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox (Coptics, Ethiopians, Armenians, one of the non-central Syrian groups), and the Church of the East (the other Syrians, Nestorians, etc.) All three of those groups have strong historical connections to Christian universalist teachers, as we now know, and which is becoming more publicly known; and previously one of the requirements for bishops to leave those communions and enter the RC was giving up any beliefs about UR they were holding – which is clearly no longer true!
A major stumbling block on this is, and will be for a long time, the recent Great Catechism, put up under the oversight of John Paul 2 himself with Benedict’s strong assistance; which is bluntly against UR, or rather bluntly in favor of some kind of ECT and so against UR by deduction. I’m very doubtful the language there can be read around to allow UR as a possibility, though I’ve only seen the official English translation, and wouldn’t know what I’m looking at in the original Latin base. Father [tag]akimel[/tag] or someone familiar with Latin here, perhaps?
Meanwhile, apparently whoever came up with this joke from back in 2008 (or earlier), was a prophet.
(I originally found that on the blog of our friend Chris Tilling, and posted it here back near the founding of the forum – one of our first humor category entries! 
)
Dr. Timothy Dalrymple introduced an Axis frameworkg in A Framework for Understanding the Rob Bell Controversy. One Axis distinction he made was the difference between a potential universalist and an actual universalist. So Pope Frances could be a potential universalist - “all people may well be saved” and not "all people definitely will be saved ".
For the benefit of everyone, here’s a good Twilight Zone story on dogs and heaven entitled The Hunt:
Lol @ the inclusion of animals and Protestants! 
Interesting… I hope you’re right 
I was partially raised by Protestants, and partially raised by cats – but I repeat myself.