Mr. Scalfari agreed.

“They are perfectly right,” said Mr. Scalfari in an interview on Friday night, as the pope prepared for a ceremonial leading of the stations of the cross on Good Friday. “These are not interviews, these are meetings, I don’t take notes. It’s a chat.”

While Mr. Scalfari said he remembered the pope saying hell did not exist, he allowed that “I can also make mistakes.” He said he had committed an error of omission by failing to fully explain the pope’s answer on the need for a stronger Europe. “At my age,” Mr. Scalfari said, he was more used to being interviewed than interviewing.

The editor of La Repubblica, Mario Calabresi, said the paper had not labeled Mr. Scalfari’s piece as an interview. It was, Mr. Calabresi said, the fruit of a “cultural exchange and dialogue out of the 19th century between a Jesuit believer and a man of the enlightenment fascinated by religion.”

Sophisticated readers of Italian journalism understand how to read Mr. Scalfari, which is to say, with a grain of salt when it comes to papal quotations.

To many here, Mr. Scalfari personifies an impressionistic style of Italian journalism, prevalent in its coverage of the Vatican, politics and much else, in which the gist is more important than the verbatim, and the spirit greater than the letter.

And yet, despite the public relations headaches Mr. Scalfari has caused, Francis, 81, seems to like talking to him.

The pope, Mr. Scalfari said, has a “need to talk with a nonbeliever who stimulates him.” This month’s meeting was their fifth.