
Madrid, Spain, Jan 14, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).
“Hope,” the autobiography of Pope Francis, hit the shelves of Italian bookstores Tuesday and will be on sale starting Jan. 16 in more than 100 countries.
The book marks the first time a pope has provided a first-person narration of the episodes that have marked his entire life, in this case from his childhood in Argentina in a family of Italian immigrants to becoming the successor of St. Peter.
Published by Random House in its 320-page English edition, the book is the result of six years of work and was written with the collaboration of journalist Carlo Musso, who helped the Holy Father tell his story.
In addition to his memoirs, in the book the pope takes up issues such as war and peace, immigration, the environmental crisis, social policy, sexuality, and the future of the Catholic Church. All of this under the rubric of hope, a theme that is also being highlighted during the 2025 Jubilee.
In a recent interview, Pope Francis said the book was originally planned to be published following his death. “But since I’m not dying (he laughs), they’re afraid that it will lose relevance and they decided to do it now,” the Holy Father explained last December in a conversation with Argentine journalist Bernarda Llorente.
The pontiff, according to the excerpts released by the publishing house, begins his memoirs with an episode that marked his destiny: the sinking of the transatlantic ship Princesa Mafalda, known as the “Italian Titanic.”
His grandparents, together with his father, Mario, bought tickets to sail on the ship that left Genoa on Oct. 11, 1927, bound for Buenos Aires. However, they ultimately didn’t board the vessel because they were unable to sell their belongings in time. “That’s why I am here now; you can’t imagine how many times I have thanked Divine Providence for it,” the pontiff recounts in his autobiography.
He also brings up memories from his childhood at “531 Membrillar Street” in the Flores neighborhood of Buenos Aires, as well as the friendships he forged there, including with a prostitute known as “La Parota,” who decided to change her life and leave the streets to care for the elderly.
‘Healthy irony’ as a medicine to counter narcissism
The Holy Father devotes a large amount of space in his autobiography to reflecting on the value of a sense of humor to deal with sadness and “healthy irony” as a medicine to counter narcissism.
“Irony is medicine, not only to elevate and enlighten others but also for oneself, because self-irony is a powerful tool to overcome the temptation of narcissism. Narcissists continually look in the mirror, they get all primped up, they observe themselves over and over again, but the best advice in front of a mirror is always to laugh at oneself. It will do us good,” the pope comments in the book.
Throughout its pages, the reader will even find some jokes told by the pope himself. The Italian newspaper Avvenire gave a preview of one of them:
“And they also told me one that concerns me directly, that of Pope Francis in America. It goes more or less like this: As soon as he lands at the New York airport for his apostolic trip to the United States, Pope Francis finds an enormous limousine waiting for him. He is a little embarrassed by all that pomp, but then he thinks that he hasn’t driven in ages, and never a car like that, and in short he says to himself: Well, when will I get another chance? He looks at the limousine and asks the driver: ‘Would you let me try it?’ And the driver: ‘Look, I’m really sorry, Your Holiness, but I just can’t do it, you know the procedures, the protocols…’
“But you know how they say the pope is when he gets something into his head; in short he insists and insists, until the guy gives in. Pope Francis then gets behind the wheel on one of those major streets and … gets a taste for it, starts to press on the accelerator: going 50, 80, 120… Until a siren is heard and a police car pulls up alongside him and stops him.
“A young policeman approaches the tinted window, the slightly intimidated pope rolls it down and the man turns pale. ‘Excuse me a minute,’ he says, and goes back to his car to call the station. ‘Chief… I think I have a problem.’ And the chief says, ‘What problem?’ ‘Well, I stopped a car for speeding… but there’s a really important guy in it.’ ‘How important? Is he the mayor?’ ‘No, chief, more than the mayor…’ ‘And who is more than the mayor? The governor?’ ‘No, more…’ ‘But is he the president?’ ‘More, I think…’ ‘And who could possibly be more important than the president?’ ‘Look, chief, I don’t know exactly who he is, but I’ll just tell you that the pope is his chauffeur!’”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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I’ve heard that joke before, but it involved Tom Clemens who was at that point QB at Notre Dame and his coach Ara Parseghian, who had taken over the driving from Clemens.
Not an act of humility when someone writes an autobiography.
Well, it’s narcissism of the nth degree when a pope writes and publishes his autobiographical memoir before he dies. That the pope tells an overwrought silly tale, a type of ‘joke,’ shows he knows nothing of irony.
I hope that God will teach him.
The fact that he repeats his Orwellian claims that Catholics who are Catholic are ideologues and Synodalists of the spirit of the age stand in resistance to ideology demonstrates, yet again, that he knows nothing of irony, not even during reflections on his life.
I haven’t read the autobiography but from these reports that are recounting things from the book, Pope Francis is making the claim once again that what he is doing is “continuing” the work and direction of Benedict. It comes out more clearly in the review in CRUX in the link, written by “Crux Staff”.
Invariably for the time being we are left with segregated bits of information that appear to say there is reflected a cogent, coherent dynamic and integrity that apparently are explaining a good irony without mirrors and a bad narcissism with mirrors. Among the items, “Homosexuality is not a crime.”
The reason given for homosexuality not adding up to crime is that “God loves the homosexual the way he is”. As a result of this -so it seems to point- homosexuality can’t be criminalized and it took a Pope to figure it out only in the 21st Century.
Then presumably as a result of that, homosexual “civil union” really “should be legalized”. Also as a result of this -as the discussion seems to impart,- it shows up an objectional “psychological condition” with a “concealing of mental imbalance” in those objecting clerics who “wear lace”.
Homosexuality is not temptation and narcissisms?
Presumably abortion can remain as a crime but it is not obvious if that would be because abortion is not a “personal human fact” or because God does not love you as you are when you are in with an abortion. The Pope will have to develop that? Synodally? “It is the people who are blessed not the relationships”, he explains.
From what I can tell this article in CRUX was edited and shortened. The part about Bergoglio flooring his schoolmate and the fellow losing consciousness when his head hit the floor. This ties in with “flat-footed”? If I am not mistaken about that being edited here, it could be Crux Staff thought better to leave that for the book!
Escriva had hit a fellow seminarian and Bergoglio came along to change the Opus Dei statutes ironies?
“Love me as you are” is a prayer put out in 1973 by Marian Eucharistic Centre (CEM) with an Impirmatur from Archb. Hugo Poletti Feb. 11 1973 and a blessing from Cardinal Ursi same year. It was the 25th anniversary of CEM’s activity under the care of the Central Secretariat. I feel Pope Francis is spoiling this.
The prayer is offered in the booklet in the name of M. Lebrun “E.M.T.” It ends by saying “Whatever should befall wait not to be holy in order to abandon thyself to love; or thou wouldst love me never.” Whereas information was not reaching Benedict and was stumped off coming from him, Pope Francis is relying too much only on what he gets reported to him and then sending forth a lot that has no application or is disjointed.
On top of that the type on “criticisms” Pope Francis broadcasts are already long known to have first emanated from the Lodge and makes sense to lodge boys. Why is he endorsing and propelling that?
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2025/01/autobiography-by-pope-francis-tells-about-his-growing-age
The Holy Father’s falls and his failing health do not augur well in the midst of distorted stories he gives via hyper-concepts and alter-perception. The problems Benedict was having were not due/are not due to people wearing lace or being too traditional and the resolution to those problems is not found in “legalizing homosexual civil union”.
Assigning what is not love the descriptor “Hope” would be a form of high dissimulation. There are people around and under the Pope who will be wanting to “make legacy stick” and will want to insist that these discrepancies are reality and a match with Revelation.
The Holy Father seems to forget that there are other people who genuinely pray for him and have to do so in duty not merely out of love. This duty is informed in hope and informs hope where lies and lying and sarcasm and cynicism etc. can not abide; where in fact those malformations themselves avoid inclusion and seek out their own exclusivity self-definition.
The alleged faults the Pope is pointing out in particular stereotyped groups and the layered ironies that catch his attentions do not justify what else is being offered – no advantage in made for ANYONE by his “not selling ice cream”.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/261591/vatican-pope-francis-suffers-bruised-arm-from-fall
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-francis-arm-in-sling-after-second-fall-in-2-months/