Pope Francis has called on the Roman Catholic Church to alter the Lord’s Prayer because he believes the current translation suggests God is capable of leading us “into temptation”.
Instead, “Our father”, which is the best known prayer in Christianity, should be said using the phrasing adopted by French bishops, which reads as “do not let us enter into temptation”.
The alternative wording used in France implies that it is through human fault that people are led to sin, rather than by God.
The pontiff made the suggestion during a televised interview on Wednesday evening, in which he claimed that the traditional phrasing was “not a good translation”.
“I am the one who falls. It’s not him pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen,” he continued. “A father doesn’t do that, a father helps you to get up immediately. It’s Satan who leads us into temptation, that’s his department.”
Throughout history, new editions and translations of the Bible have been plagued with errors. They include the most infamous version, Robert Barker’s King James Bible, published in 1611, which omitted the word “not” from the seventh commandment.
The mistake meant that the commandment read: “Thou shalt commit adultery”.