Pope Francis has no intention of resigning as he feels that his health is good enough to allow him to carry on, he says in a new book whose excerpts were published by Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper yesterday.
“This is a distant hypothesis, because I don’t have reasons serious enough to make me think about giving up,” Francis was quoted as saying in Life: My Story Through History, a book due out in Italian and English on Tuesday.
Pope Francis is 87 and has been increasingly frail in recent years, using a wheelchair or a cane to move around and recently suffering from what have been described as bouts of bronchitis or colds that have led him to limit his public speaking.
Nevertheless, in the book he reassures about his condition.
“Thank the Lord, I enjoy good health and, God willing, there are many projects still to be realised,” he said, repeating that he would consider quitting only in case of a “serious physical impediment.”
Elsewhere in the book, he renewed his condemnation of abortion and surrogate parenting, and noted that his focus on the poor and marginalised does not make him a communist or a Marxist.
The book spans over 300 pages and covers all aspects of Pope Francis’s life, from his relationship with his family, especially with his grandparents, their emigration to Argentina in 1929, a “little derailment” during his seminary period, and the Second World War with its dramatic atomic epilogue.
“The use of atomic energy for war purposes is a crime against humanity, our dignity, and any future possibility in our common home,” said the Pope, posing the heavy question of how one can claim to be a “champion of peace and justice while building new weapons of war.”
The book also includes a chapter on soccer, his passion, writing about Maradona and his vow “to no longer watch TV.”
Pope Francis’ predecessor Benedict XVI was the first Pope to resign in around 600 years, citing the strains of old age. He quit in February 2013, aged 85, and went on to live for almost 10 more years, dying at the age of 95.