Pope Francis really got religious people and atheists alike talking yesterday when he said that every person was redeemed through Jesus. This includes atheists. The pope said that atheists should be considered to be good people if their deeds are good.

These comments by the pope were made during his morning mass at his residence in an event where he usually speaks without any prepared comments. This gesture of reaching out to people from all kinds of religion and even those with no religion by Pope Francis is quite the contrary to Pope Benedict who was deemed to look upon non-Catholics as believers of a lower class.