CNN
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One of Pope Francis’ lasting reforms will be to reshape the papacy to embrace frugality and humility, as seen in his decision to live in the Vatican’s guest house and carry his briefcase on the papal plane.
With the release of his new autobiography titled “Hope” on Tuesday, Francis highlighted this change with surprising candor about his past mistakes and misdeeds. In it, a young man is seen getting into an argument with a classmate who was thrown to the ground, hit his head and “even lost consciousness”, and claims he is still committing “mistakes and sins”. Includes appearance etc.
It’s all the more shocking for a pope whose Catholic theology is considered “infallible” when teaching about faith and morals.
“I feel that I have a reputation that I don’t deserve and that I don’t deserve public recognition,” wrote Francis, who was recently awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor by President Joe Biden. “Without a doubt, this is my strongest feeling.”
The memoir covers major events in Francis’ papacy, including revealing that he faced two assassination attempts during a 2021 trip to Iraq, but also during his papacy and during powerful opposition groups. It doesn’t provide many new details about the scandals and controversies it had to deal with. He has been encountered from several quarters of the church.
Regarding the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, the Pope said he felt “called to take responsibility for all the evil committed by certain priests.” When Francis assumed the papacy in 2013, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI handed him a large white box filled with documents about “the most difficult and painful situations of abuse, corruption, black dealings, and fraud.” He explained. The Pope recalled that when he was handed the box, his predecessor told him that “everything is here” and that “now it’s your turn” to deal with the problem.
The 88-year-old pope is also using his memoirs to address the crises facing the world today. He has always described himself as “politically restless” and has repeatedly denounced the evils of war, linking today’s rise of populism to the 1930s and Hitler’s Germany. (Francisco was born in 1936 and remembers his grandmother standing up to Mussolini’s black shirt.)
He writes that young people need to know “how distorted populism is born and grows,” adding, “The German federal elections of 1932-1933 and the aftermath of World War I… It reminded me of Adolf Hitler, a former infantryman obsessed with defeat and “racism.” “Purity” promised Germany’s growth after a failed government. ”
The plight of the refugees that Francis has so tirelessly supported is also personal. His paternal grandparents and father had planned to sail from Italy to Argentina on the Principessa Mafalda in 1927, but although the ship sank with loss of life, they were not able to make the crossing later. It became. This has made Francis sensitive to the dangers faced by migrants today, criticizing countries that produce weapons while “rejecting and turning away those weapons and the refugees created by conflicts.”
Francis’ simple humility can be traced back to his upbringing. In his memoirs, Latin America’s first pope recalls growing up in the Flores neighborhood of Buenos Aires, depicting a joyful, diverse and close-knit community of people of different faiths, but also a place where ” It was also a place where he saw the “darker, more difficult side of humanity,” he said. “The world of prisons” and the existence of prostitution.”
Later, as a bishop in the Argentine capital, he ministered to prostitutes, recalling the time he performed the last rites on a prostitute in La Polota, his childhood neighborhood. the day of her death. ” Francis’ awareness of human conflict and his own failures led him to repeatedly insist on the importance of God’s mercy. And during his papacy, he sought to welcome LGBTQ+ people, repeatedly saying in his memoirs that God “loves them[gays]as they are,” and referring to a group of transgender women he met at the Vatican. “Gay girls.” God! ”
His new autobiography emphasizes that Francis remains a vocal pope who can connect with people beyond the institution of the Catholic Church. The memoir was written over six years in collaboration with Carlo Musso of Italian publisher Mondadori and has been published in more than 80 major languages.
It follows Francis’ memoir, “Life,” which was published last year. Hope was originally scheduled to be published after the Pope’s death, but its release was brought forward to coincide with the Catholic Church’s Jubilee.
As for his future, the pope said he was not considering resigning, although it was a “possibility”, and also cited recent health problems. Francis said he is now in good health and attends physical therapy twice a week, but “the reality is, simply put, I am older.” He said he never expected to be elected pope, but from that moment on he made it clear he was determined to keep his feet on the ground.
He explained how he moved to a guest house in Casa Santa Marta, avoiding the papal apartment in the isolated Vatican’s Apostolic Palace because he “couldn’t live without people around him,” and said he had a sense of humour. emphasize the importance of maintaining This is evident even in his memoirs, such as when the pope explains how he was told to wear white trousers instead of black to wear under his new white papal cassock.
“They made me laugh. I said I didn’t want to be an ice cream salesman, and I kept mine,” Pope wrote.
