“I like punctuality, it’s a virtue I have learned to appreciate,” Pope Francis writes in the fifth chapter of his autobiography, to be published on Tuesday in 18 languages, adding that he considers it “a sign of good manners and respect, to arrive promptly.”
Unfortunately, as a newborn, Francis writes, he arrived a week late, necessitating a call to the doctor, who sat on his mother’s stomach and began to “to press and to ‘jump about’” to induce his birth.
“And so it was that I came into the world,” Francis writes.
“Hope: The Autobiography,” by Pope Francis — a 320-page compendium of the pope’s memories and musings on the major social and political issues of our times, including climate change, poverty, immigration, arms control and war — is billed by its English-language publisher, Random House, as a “historic publication” and “the first memoir to be published by a sitting Pope.”
That is not technically true. That honor belongs to Pope Pius II’s 15th Century chronicles, “The Commentaries,” a 13-book account of his life that is considered a seminal text in Renaissance humanism.
Francis is also not the first pope to share his life story. As a cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger wrote an autobiography which was published in 1997, eight years before he became Pope Benedict XVI, and both he and his predecessor, John Paul II, coauthored books with journalists that were personal reflections and not official papal documents.
But for readers, including the Roman Catholic faithful, “Hope” vividly recreates the colorful world where the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio grew up — a world that was a menagerie of migrants from various countries and colorful figures, including prostitutes, his “bag-lady” aunt, and other memorable family members.
People who watch Francis closely will recognize in the autobiography many of his views from his various encyclicals, his weekly addresses at the Vatican and speeches during his travels. “Hope,” however, draws a line from the childhood events and encounters that forged Francis’ thinking to the current day.
Francis’ unswerving support for migrants, he writes, derives from his own background as the son of Italian immigrants to Argentina. His abhorrence of war — “anyone who makes war is evil. God is peace,” he writes in “Hope” — finds root in the wartime experiences of his grandfather in World War I. “Nono described the horror, the pain, the fear, the absurd alienating pointlessness of the war,” he writes. A left-leaning biomedical pharmaceutical researcher he met before entering a seminary “taught me to think — by which I mean, to think about politics.”
There are many personal memories described in the book: As a young teacher teaching creative writing, Francis writes, his students nicknamed him “Carucha” or “Babyface.” He recalls that he once helped a nearly blind Jorge Luis Borges to shave. “He was an agnostic who recited the Lord’s Prayer every night because he had promised his mother he’d do so, and who would die with the last rites.”
Francis is no stranger to journalistic collaborations. A book on his life written from interviews he gave to the Argentine journalist Sergio Rubin was published when he was still Cardinal of Buenos Aires.
Since he became pope there have been several more: Francis wrote “Let Us Dream,” a first-person account exploring how crisis can be a positive catalyst for change, during the coronavirus pandemic, with his biographer Austen Ivereigh. The book made the New York Times best-seller list. Last year, “Life,” an anecdote-rich book written with Fabio Marchese Ragona, was published worldwide, and also made The Times’s list.
“Hope” was six years in the making and one of the publishing world’s best kept secrets. Originally, Francis had intended the autobiography to be published posthumously, but last summer, he changed his mind so that the publication would coincide with the 2025 Jubilee, the Catholic Church Holy Year that takes place every quarter century.
Mondadori, the Italian publisher, announced the book’s imminent release at last year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, stirring excitement, not least among Francis’ biographers.
An autobiography was an opportunity, said Mr. Iverneigh in an interview, “for Francis to go into episodes of his life, about which his biographers, including me,” had speculated, argued “and struggled sometimes to interpret.”
But while rich in anecdotes about Francis’ childhood in the Buenos Aires barrio, episodes Mr. Iverneigh described as “gems,” the book does not offer much insight into Francis’ later life other than that which is already “well-trodden material.”
For example, Francis says little about his years at the Vatican. His comment that the “reform of the Roman Curia was the most demanding, and for a long while there was the greatest resistance to change” does not offer any details about the struggles that were involved.
“The pope is the pope and it’s great to have his reflections repackaged for a mass audience,” said Mr. Iverneigh, who added that he believed the pope saw these books as “an evangelizing tool.” But, he added, “I was frankly disappointed” to find that most of the original material was relegated to his childhood years.
Perhaps the most newsworthy snippet in the book is Francis’ recollections of his 2021 visit to Iraq, which were published as an excerpt in the Jesuit magazine America in December. Francis wrote that he had survived two foiled assassination attempts. The former governor of Nineveh later denied that any such incidents had occurred. The Times also published an excerpt from the autobiography in December, this one about there being faith in humor.
Gian Maria Vian, a former editor in chief of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, said that he appreciated the “many personal details” the book added to Francis’ biography, but that much had been written through “rose tinted glasses.”
Francis wrote the book with Mr. Musso, a former Mondadori publishing director who has recently founded an independent publishing house. The idea took shape in 2019 and work began a year later.
“I was honored by his trust,” Mr. Musso said. “I don’t think he wanted an autobiography to talk about himself, but using his memories, his stories, to speak of everyone and to everyone, even very difficult moments.”
