Pope Francis is introspective and self-critical in his autobiography, at least about his youth

Faithful gather to attend the Catholic Easter Sunday mass led by Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, April 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

ROME (AP) — An introspective Pope Francis has divulged some of the behind-the-scenes dynamics of the secret 2013 conclave that elected him pope and the resistance he has encountered ever since, in his autobiography being released Tuesday that also doubles down on some of his more controversial decisions as pontiff.

“Hope: The Autobiography” was only supposed to be published after Francis’ death. But at his own request, the book is hitting bookshelves now in more than 80 countries to coincide with the start of the church’s Holy Year.

Its publishers say it’s the first autobiography ever written by a sitting pope, though Francis has collaborated with plenty of other memoir-type books before, and much of his papacy and personal backstory are already well known.

But “Hope” does provide personal insights into how history’s first Latin American pope interprets his childhood in Buenos Aires and how it has informed his priorities as pope. Drawn from conversations over six years with Italian journalist Carlo Musso, “Hope” offers Francis’ own sometimes unflattering assessments of decisions he made or things he regrets — at least before he became pope.

It’s almost confessional at times, an 88-year-old Jesuit performing the Ignatian examination of his conscience at the end of his life to identify things he said or did that he now realizes could have been done better. Whether it’s the time when he insisted that a schoolmate pay to repair a bike he had broken, or knocked another schoolmate nearly unconscious, he seems deeply ashamed of his younger self and says he still doesn’t believe himself worthy of the papacy.

“If I consider what is the greatest gift that I desire from the Lord, and have experienced, it is the gift of shame,” he writes at one point.

Curiously, two periods of Bergoglio’s past which have remained somewhat mysterious to outsiders are once again avoided in “Hope.” One concerns his stint in Córdoba, Argentina from 1990-1992. Francis has never really explained the internal Jesuit dynamics that resulted in him being exiled to work as a confessor at the Jesuit church more than a decade after he was provincial of the order in Argentina. The period is mentioned only in passing when Francis refers simply to “the dark night at Córdoba.”

The other period of unknown in Bergoglio’s backstory concerns the time he spent in Germany doing research on the theologian Romano Guardini for a dissertation he never finished.

Also given short shrift was the impact of the clergy sexual abuse scandal, which convulsed his papacy for several years. The scandal exploded during Francis’ 2018 trip to Chile and the pope mentions the scandal briefly in the book. But he spends far more time recalling a more heart-warming memory from the Chile trip, when he married a pair of flight attendants on board the papal plane during the flight to Iquique.

The second half of the book, focusing on the papacy, is far less self-critical and in fact is strident in defending his sometimes controversial decisions. It is here that Francis provides further details of his emotions as the votes started going his way on the second day of balloting during the March 2013 conclave that elected him pope.

Francis reveals that he was among those cardinals receiving “stopgap votes” in the first rounds, when cardinals toss out votes to see which way the balloting winds are heading. He says he wasn’t keeping count in the early rounds but realized that his fate was sealed once he got 69 votes on the fourth ballot, out of the 77 needed for a two-thirds majority of the 115 cardinals.

The fifth ballot – the one that made him pope -- actually had to be done twice. An extra ballot paper got stuck to one that a cardinal had filled out, so that when the papers were counted there were 116 rather than 115. The papers were burned without having even been opened and a new fifth ballot called.

“When my name was pronounced for the seventy-seventh time, there was a burst of applause, while the reading of the votes went on,” he writes. “I don’t know exactly how many votes there were in the end, I was no longer listening, the noise covered the voice of the scrutineer.”

One of the first things he did after the vote was to embrace Cardinal Angelo Scola, the archbishop of Milan who had been such a favorite going into the conclave that the Italian bishops conference had dummied up a press release announcing his election. “He deserved that embrace,” Francis writes.

Once in the sacristy, known as the “Room of Tears,” to be outfitted with the papal garb, Francis reveals that he had in his pocket his old episcopal ring which he used, suggesting that he had an intuition getting dressed in the morning that he would indeed be elected.

“The red shoes? No, I have orthopedic shoes. I’m rather flat-footed,” he writes of his sartorioal choices that night. Nor did he want the red velvet cape, known as a mozzetta, favored by his predecessor. “They were not for me. Two days later they told me I would have to change my trousers, wear white ones. They made me laugh. I don’t want to be an ice cream seller, I said. And I kept my own.”

Those looking for current Vatican gossip in “Hope” will be somewhat disappointed, as Francis only fleetingly touches on the more controversial parts of his papacy. He is far more certain of his decisions made as pope, even doubling down on blasting traditionalist Catholic priests as rigid and mentally unstable.

“This rigidity is often accompanied by elegant and costly tailoring, lace, fancy trimmings, rochets. Not a taste for tradition but clerical ostentation,” he writes. “These ways of dressing up sometimes conceal mental imbalance, emotional deviation, behavioral difficulties, a personal problem that may be exploited.”

He writes that the reform of the Vatican bureaucracy, particularly the effort to impose international accounting and budgeting standards on its finances, have been the most difficult task of his papacy and one that generated “the greatest resistance to change.”

“I have been summoned to a battle,” he writes.

He strongly defends his decision to authorize a sweeping trial of 10 people, including a cardinal, accused of alleged financial misconduct related to an investment in a London property. The trial resulted in several convictions, but also cost the Holy See reputational harm, given questions about whether the defendants received a fair trial and Francis’ own role in the saga.

“The decisions that I made in that respect were not easy, I was sure there would be problems, but I also know that the truth must never be hidden and being opaque is always the worst choice,” he writes.

After African bishops unanimously rejected his approval of gay blessings, Francis stands by his decision and insists that the blessing is for the people, not the relationship. “Homosexuality is not a crime,” he writes, repeating a statement he first made in a 2023 interview with The Associated Press.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Nicole Winfield, The Associated Press