ROME — Jorge Bergoglio, also known as “Pope Francis,” claimed to a young boy on Sunday that his atheist father is in Heaven because he was a “good man” and God will not “abandon His children when they are good.” He also counseled the child to pray to his deceased dad.

Bergoglio was participating in a question and answer session at St. Paul of the Cross in Rome when a young boy named Emanuele approached the microphone. The boy, who began to cry, was asked by Bergoglio to come onto the platform and speak the question in his ear.

After consoling the child, Bergoglio told the audience what the boy had said.

“My father died a short time ago. He was an atheist, but he had his four children baptized. He was a good man. Is Dad in Heaven?'” Emanuele asked, as relayed by Bergoglio.

“It’s nice that a son says that about his father, that he was good,” Bergoglio remarked. “The one who says who goes to Heaven is God. But what is God’s heart with a dad like that? What? What do you think? A father’s heart. God has a dad’s heart.”

He suggested that God was pleased with Emanuele’s father for having his sons baptized despite not being a follower of Christ himself.

“And with a dad who was not a believer, but who baptized his children and gave them that bravura, do you think God would be able to leave him far from Himself?” Bergoglio asked, using a pushing away hand motion.

The audience replied no.

“Does God abandon His children?” he pressed further. “Does God abandon His children when they are good?”

Those in attendance again called out no.

“There, Emanuele, that is the answer,” Bergoglio said to the boy. “Surely God was proud of your father because it is easier as a believer to baptize your children than to baptize them when you are not a believer. Surely this pleased God very much.”

He closed by urging Emanuele to “talk to” and “pray to” his father.

Mike Gendron, a former Roman Catholic who now leads the Texas-based Proclaiming the Gospel Ministries, told Christian News Network that Bergoglio could have spoken truth while still being gentle, but instead he provided the boy—and anyone who hears his words—with unbiblical false counsel.

“The pope should never speak for God unless he speaks from God’s inspired, authoritative Word,” Gendron said. “It is good to give comfort to a young boy whose father died after living his life as an atheist. The pope could have told the boy about the thief who lived his life as a sinful unbeliever, but in his last hour he repented and trusted Jesus to bring him into paradise (Luke 23:40-43). He could have comforted the boy by saying, ‘Perhaps your dad trusted Jesus as his savior in his last moments on earth.'”

However, “[t]he boy had better theology than the pope,” he said. “He knew his dad was an unbeliever and deserved to go to Hell.”

Gendron explained that contrary to Bergoglio’s words, Scripture clearly states that not everyone is God’s child.

“The pope said God does not abandon His children, [but] God’s Word tells us everyone is either a child of God or a child of the devil,” he said, pointing to 1 John 3:10, which reads, “By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.”

Jesus also said in John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.”

Gendron additionally expressed concern that Bergoglio urged the boy to pray to his deceased father.

“Perhaps the pope does not know that anyone who consults the dead is detestable to the Lord (Deut. 18:10-12),” he said.

“It is tragic for Catholics to be led down the wide road to destruction by following the heretical teachings of this pope,” Gendron staed. “It is my prayer that Catholics will test everyman’s teaching with the supreme authority of God’s Word (Acts 17:11). That is the only way anyone can be protected from the false teachers that are leading people to Hell. The nature of deception is that people do not know they are deceived unless they are confronted with the truth.”

As previously reported, Christianity teaches that none are inherently good, and that all men are born with a sinful nature, being drawn toward distorted desires, such as to lie, steal, commit adultery, covet, dishonor one’s parents, commit murder, and to rebel against the very God who gave them life. Jesus outlined that lust is adultery of the heart and hatred is murder in one’s heart.

Romans 3 explains, “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

As men are utterly incapable of changing themselves, Jesus said in John 3:3 men must be regenerated by the Spirit of God, and must pass from spiritual death into spiritual life. Without Christ’s perfect righteousness, none shall enter Heaven—the Bible teaches—and since all have sinned, none can justify themselves by their own works.

“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” Jesus taught.

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