Francis’s Autobiography Is Out for Sale. Much Ado About Nothing

It is a stran­ge auto­bio­gra­phy, the late­st one pac­ka­ged by Jorge Mario Bergoglio, with a big publi­ci­ty launch all over the world. An auto­bio­gra­phy that in the fir­st half of its almo­st 400 pages tells more about his rela­ti­ves than about him as a child and then as a tee­na­ger, and in the remai­ning pages keeps quiet about pre­ci­se­ly what one would most expect to read, about his adult life befo­re and after his elec­tion as pope.

“Every time a pope is unwell, there’s a lit­tle gust of con­cla­ve wind,” he wri­tes. But he imme­dia­te­ly adds that “I’m fine,” “I can eat any­thing,” and it’s just that “I’m old” (as in the pho­to abo­ve, from January 18, with an arm in a sling after a tum­ble, but without chan­ging any­thing on his sche­du­le).

For his burial he has alrea­dy opted for the basi­li­ca of Santa Maria Maggiore, “in the room whe­re they now keep the can­de­la­bra.” And as for the choi­ce of his suc­ces­sor, let them sort it out. He recoun­ts his elec­tion as pope in 2013 in about twen­ty pages, to say that eve­ry­thing hap­pe­ned without the slighte­st pre­ar­ran­ged plan, and the votes rai­ned down on him only from the penul­ti­ma­te bal­lot, who kno­ws from whe­re, and he too impro­vi­sed eve­ry­thing in the moment, inclu­ding the name of Francis, inclu­ding the fir­st words from the log­gia of bles­sings, and he did not go to live in Santa Marta for love of pover­ty, but for “psy­chia­tric rea­sons,” becau­se “without peo­ple around I can­not live.”

With the field clea­red of con­jec­tu­res about the next con­cla­ve, on which the book does not give the slighte­st indi­ca­tion, it is howe­ver use­ful to take note of some words and not a few silen­ces.

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The rea­son, for exam­ple, for his con­stant evo­ca­tion and exal­ta­tion of the role of grand­pa­ren­ts in tran­smit­ting the faith to their gran­d­chil­dren, igno­ring the dads and moms, is explai­ned well by the account of his extraor­di­na­ry emo­tio­nal bond with his pater­nal grand­ma, Rosa, “the cor­ner­sto­ne of my exi­sten­ce,” and by the dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship with his mom, Regina Maria, who did indeed, when he was a child, get him to listen to and love ope­ra, but also made him “cry my heart out with an anguish that assai­led me deep insi­de,” due to her fre­quent argu­men­ts with his dad. And she did not take it well at all when her son ente­red the semi­na­ry, whe­re for years she did not so much as set foot until the day he ente­red the Society of Jesus, “main­tai­ning a cer­tain reser­ve” even after that.

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Another you­th­ful epi­so­de that Pope Francis sets forth clear­ly in the book is his affi­lia­tion with Peronism. Not his fami­ly mem­bers, he wri­tes; they were all anti-Peronists and even “radi­cals.” His ack­no­w­led­ged poli­ti­cal men­tor, Esther Ballestrino de Careaga, was a staunch Marxist. And yet from his ado­le­scen­ce, he says, he had a “liking” for “the social reforms that Perón was imple­men­ting,” to the point of almo­st coming to blo­ws with an uncle of his who “tal­ked, bad­mou­thed, tal­ked” again­st Perón and Evita, and that bra­wl “was a bit like the public bap­ti­sm of my poli­ti­cal pas­sion.”

Nothing new. This Peronism of the young Bergoglio has been kno­wn about for some time, inclu­ding throu­gh his own repea­ted admis­sions in books and inter­views. But a cou­ple of years ago, sur­pri­sin­gly, in yet ano­ther autho­ri­zed bio­gra­phy of him signed by Sergio Rubin and Francesca Ambrogetti, enti­tled “El Pastor,” he denied having been so much as a “sym­pa­thi­zer” of that poli­ti­cal move­ment, dispu­ting with tho­se who con­ti­nued to defi­ne him as such.

An asto­ni­shing denial, this one. Which flew in the face, among other things, of his han­do­ver of the Universidad del Salvador, when he was pro­vin­cial of the Jesuits, to the ultra-Peronists of the “Guardia de Hierro,” repor­ted on chap­ter and ver­se in pre­vious autho­ri­zed bio­gra­phies of him, and also of what was revea­led by the bio­gra­pher who may be the most con­ge­nial to him, the Englishman Austen Ivereigh: that “not only was Bergoglio clo­se to the ‘Guardia de Hierro,’ but in February and March of 1974, throu­gh his friend Vicente Damasco, a colo­nel and clo­se col­la­bo­ra­tor of Perón, he was one of the ten or twel­ve experts invi­ted to wri­te their thoughts into the draft of the ‘Modelo nacio­nal,’ the poli­ti­cal testa­ment that Perón con­si­de­red the means to uni­te the Argentines after his death.”

Well then, in the auto­bio­gra­phy now out for sale Francis denies the pre­vious denial and puts back into cir­cu­la­tion what has always been kno­wn. He dedi­ca­tes lit­tle more than a page to Peronism, but enou­gh to reaf­firm that he saw in it “a link with the social doc­tri­ne of the Church,” pro­ven by the fact that “Perón sent his spee­ches to Bishop Nicolás De Carlo, in tho­se years the bishop of Resistencia, in Chaco, so that he could read them and tell him if they were in accord with that doc­tri­ne.”

The poli­ti­cal vision of Pope Francis, his affi­lia­tion with what he calls the “popu­lar move­men­ts,” his ele­va­tion of the peo­ple to a “myth,” have their roo­ts in Peronism. As does his invin­ci­ble aver­sion to “kil­ler capi­ta­li­sm,” repea­ted­ly and empha­ti­cal­ly con­dem­ned in the book.

And then the­re are the invec­ti­ves again­st war, which “is always a defeat, always,” and again­st the manu­fac­tu­re and tra­de of wea­pons, “mad­ness,” which occu­py dozens and dozens of pages in the book.

Except for tho­se two soli­ta­ry lines in which one sud­den­ly reads that “we are not to con­fu­se attac­ker and attac­ked, and we are not to deny the right to defen­se.” So what about wea­pons? And war? Logic, as is kno­wn, is not at the fore­front of Bergoglio’s thin­king.

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He says lit­tle about his mini­stry as pope. Of the titles attri­bu­ted to pon­tiffs in histo­ry, he accep­ts only one, that of bishop of Rome. Better for the pope, he wri­tes, to return to the “role of the fir­st mil­len­nium,” but without explai­ning how and why. As for the car­di­nals, they too should know that they are not “emi­nen­ces” but “ser­van­ts.”

Nor does he say a great deal about the “syno­da­li­ty” of the Church. Rather, he insists on the the­sis that “the Church is woman, it is not male.” So woe to the “mascu­li­ni­zing” of women, “co-opting them all into the cler­gy,” or “making all the he’s and she’s dea­cons with holy orders.” Except to wri­te, a few lines fur­ther on, that “the que­stion of the admis­sion of women to the dia­co­nal mini­stry, discern­ment on which must con­ti­nue, remains open to stu­dy.”

The refe­ren­ces to his trips are also very selec­ti­ve. In recal­ling the one to Iraq in 2021, he slips in an item left out of the news cove­ra­ge:

“They aler­ted me as soon as we lan­ded in Baghdad. The poli­ce had noti­fied the Vatican gen­dar­me­rie of a report from the English secret ser­vi­ce: a woman pac­ked with explo­si­ves, a young sui­ci­de bom­ber, was hea­ding to Mosul to blow her­self up during the papal visit. And a van had also set out at top speed with the same intent.”

And on from the­re:

“When I asked the gen­dar­me­rie the next day what was kno­wn about the two attac­kers, the com­man­der answe­red me laco­ni­cal­ly, ‘They are no more.’ The Iraqi poli­ce had inter­cep­ted them and blo­wn them up.”

Leaked a month befo­re the book’s relea­se, the sto­ry was decla­red fal­se on December 18 by for­mer Nineveh gover­nor Najim al-Jubouri, then the region’s top secu­ri­ty offi­cial.

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The big­ge­st sur­pri­se in the book is in any case pro­vi­ded by the silen­ce on his life as a Jesuit.

Ordained a prie­st in 1969 and shor­tly after pro­mo­ted to novi­ce master of the Society of Jesus, “in 1973,” he wri­tes, “I beca­me pro­vin­cial supe­rior of the order. I was thirty-six years old and the youn­ge­st to have held that posi­tion in Argentina. There was much I got wrong. And I would get plen­ty of chan­ces to learn, the hard way, from my mista­kes.”

But the­re is not a sin­gle line in the book about what the­se “mista­kes” may have been. Perhaps his “autho­ri­ta­rian and quick man­ner of making deci­sions, abrup­tly and by myself,” which he spo­ke about in a 2013 inter­view with “La Civiltà Cattolica?” In the book the pope refers to his “lack of patien­ce,” to his having been at times “diso­be­dient and undi­sci­pli­ned.” But not a word more.

He ack­no­w­led­ges having had “dark times,” and men­tions “the dark night in Córdoba bet­ween 1990 and 1992.” But here too with no fur­ther hin­ts.

Yet on other occa­sions, in past years, Francis had been more expli­cit, for exam­ple at the mee­ting he had with the priests of Rome on February 15, 2018, at the begin­ning of Lent.

At that time he depic­ted the ini­tial pha­se of his life as a Jesuit as a rapid and dazz­ling ascent, during which he con­fes­sed to having exer­ci­sed a sort of “omni­po­ten­ce.”

Bergoglio was pro­vin­cial supe­rior of the Jesuits for six years, until 1979, and then until 1985 rec­tor of the Colegio Máximo in San Miguel.

But then his descen­ding pha­se began, which he recoun­ted to the priests of Rome as fol­lo­ws:

“And all this ended, so many years of mana­ge­ment. And the­re began a pro­cess of ‘but now I don’t know what to do.’ Yes, to be a con­fes­sor, to finish my doc­to­ral the­sis – which was the­re, and which I never defen­ded –. And then to start again to rethink things. The time of great deso­la­tion, for me. I lived this time with great deso­la­tion, a dark time. I belie­ved that it was alrea­dy the end of life; yes, I was a con­fes­sor, but with a spi­rit of defeat. Why? Because I belie­ved that the full­ness of my voca­tion was in doing things. I was a con­fes­sor and a spi­ri­tual direc­tor, at that time: it was my job. But I lived it in a very dark way, very dark and pain­ful, and also with the infi­de­li­ty of not fin­ding the way, and [with the search for] com­pen­sa­tion, to com­pen­sa­te for [the loss of] that world made of ‘omni­po­ten­ce,’ to seek world­ly com­pen­sa­tions.”

In fact, star­ting in 1986, when Víctor Zorzín, his bit­ter ene­my, beca­me pro­vin­cial of the Argentine Jesuits, Bergoglio was abrup­tly side­li­ned, sent again­st his will to stu­dy for a few mon­ths in Germany and final­ly for­ced into a sort of exi­le in the city of Córdoba, bet­ween 1990 and 1992, with no role at all any­mo­re, in a never-resolved ten­sion bet­ween a sen­se of defeat and a desi­re for reven­ge.

And among tho­se who then held com­mand in the Society of Jesus, both in Argentina and in Rome in the gene­ral curia, up to the supe­rior gene­ral Peter Hans Kolvenbach, this lack of psy­cho­lo­gi­cal balan­ce and the­re­fo­re this unre­lia­bi­li­ty of his had beco­me the com­mon judg­ment. What was most con­cer­ning was the fact that Bergoglio, even depri­ved of autho­ri­ty, con­ti­nued to lead a seg­ment of the Argentine Jesuits, in con­stant war with the oppo­sing seg­ment, pro­gres­si­ve and anti-Peronist.

Kolvenbach always avoi­ded mee­ting with Bergoglio when he went to Argentina, nor did Bergoglio ever set foot in the Jesuit gene­ral curia on his trips to Rome. Even such a top-level Jesuit as Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini had for­med a nega­ti­ve judg­ment of him, as repor­ted by the Church histo­rian Andrea Riccardi.

Then, sud­den­ly, the mira­cle, brought about by the Vatican nun­cio to Argentina at the time, Ubaldo Calabresi, who fished Bergoglio out of exi­le in Córdoba to make him fir­st an auxi­lia­ry bishop of Buenos Aires and then the coa­d­ju­tor of the same arch­dio­ce­se, with the right of suc­ces­sion.

The sequel, as car­di­nal and then as pope, is well kno­wn. With an undoub­ted tur­na­round from befo­re to after his elec­tion to the see of Peter, which was also seen in his face, always som­ber befo­re – “so as not to make a mista­ke,” he wri­tes – and more smi­ling after.

There is almo­st nothing in the book about this diz­zy­ing rise of his from bishop to pope. Except for the curious recol­lec­tion of a lunch in Rome “at Lella’s hou­se,” the sister of the late nun­cio Calabresi, two days befo­re the con­cla­ve. For a final thank you to his bene­fac­tor.

(Translated by Matthew Sherry: traduttore@hotmail.com)

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Sandro Magister is past “vati­ca­ni­sta” of the Italian wee­kly L’Espresso.
The late­st arti­cles in English of his blog Settimo Cielo are on this page.
But the full archi­ve of Settimo Cielo in English, from 2017 to today, is acces­si­ble.
As is the com­ple­te index of the blog www.chiesa, which pre­ce­ded it.

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