"Like any good Jesuit, who knows that this rule is ingrained in the thinking of St. Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuit founder, the Pope says that he is giving Trump the “benefit of the doubt.” As St. Ignatius wrote in the “Spiritual Exercises,” “it is necessary to suppose that every good Christian is more ready to put a good interpretation on another’s statement than to condemn it as false.” That is, one should always assume the best possible interpretation of a person’s words and deeds. So the Pope’s response was couched in explicit terms of “If he said this” and with an implicit “Perhaps I’ve misunderstood him.”
"
"
