Pope Francis, at 87 increasingly weak and wobbly, takes a trip down memory lane and speaks of his hopes for the Roman Catholic Church’s future in a new book reflecting on his life and its intersection with major world events.
Life - My Story Through History, a memoir written with Italian journalist Fabio Marchese Ragona and published by HarperCollins, goes on sale on Tuesday, the 11th anniversary of Pope Francis’ installation as the first Latin American pope.
While offering little that is new, the 230-page book is a breezy, conversational-style read starting with his childhood in Buenos Aires to today.
It is punctuated by events including the Second World War, the Holocaust, the Cold War, the 1969 Moon landing, the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, the September 11, 2001 attacks and the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013.
Pope Francis, whose health recently has shown signs of strain with successive bouts of bronchitis, a spate of hospital stays and difficulty walking, repeats that he has no intention of resigning like his predecessor unless “a serious physical impediment were to arise”.
He jokes that while some of his conservative critics “may have hoped” he would have announced a resignation after a hospital stay, there is little or no risk of it because “there are many projects to bring to fruition, God willing”.
Throughout the book he leans on historical events as backdrops to make appeals relating to current, sometimes similar, situations.
Speaking of the Second World War, he writes that still today “Jews continue to be stereotyped and persecuted. This is not Christian; it’s not even human. When will we understand that these are our brothers and sisters?”
In recalling when he first heard of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of the war, he writes: “The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is a crime against humanity, against human dignity, and against any possibility of a future in our shared home.”
Reflecting on the September 11 attacks on the US by Islamists, Pope Francis says, “It is blasphemous to use the name of God to justify slaughter, murder, terrorist attack, the persecution of individuals and entire populations – as some still do. Nobody can invoke the name of the Lord to wreak evil.”
The Pope dismisses as “fantasy, obviously invented”, recent reports by conservative American Catholic media that he would change the rules of conclaves to allow nuns and lay people to enter conclaves to choose future popes.
The Pope talked about his role as head of the Jesuit order in Argentina from 1973 to 1979, during the country’s brutal military dictatorship.
On his election to Pope in March 2013, he was accused of not having done enough to help two Jesuit missionaries who were imprisoned, tortured and released during his leadership – claims he rejected.
On the lighter side, Francis speaks of the controversial “Hand of God” goal by compatriot Diego Maradona in Argentina’s 1986 World Cup soccer quarter-final against England, which the referee allowed as he did not have a clear view showing that Maradona had used his hand.
Years later, when Maradona visited the Pope at the Vatican, “I asked him, jokingly, ‘So, which is the guilty hand?’” Francis writes.