I started reading Pope Francis’ recently released “Hope: The Autobiography” on February 13; the next day he was admitted to the hospital with a respiratory infection. I finished it on the day the Vatican announced that he has pneumonia in both lungs.
Naturally, throughout my reading experience I was very aware of Pope Francis’ mortality, which is fitting since the reality of death permeates the entire book. The prologue to the book is an account of the SS Principessa Mafalda, “the Italian Titanic,” which sank in 1927 off the coast of Brazil, killing more than 300 (Pope Francis’ father and grandparents had tickets for that voyage, but were prevented from sailing by financial constraints); another chapter midway through the book ends with a detailed description of his vision for his own funeral and burial. In the afterward, his co-author states that the plan was originally to release the book posthumously, “but the new Jubilee of Hope and the circumstances of this moment have moved [Pope Francis] to make this precious legacy available now.”
I pray that Pope Francis recovers from this current illness, and I am glad that he chose to release his autobiography at this moment in time. It is an urgent book, and it speaks to the myriad troubles besetting the entire globe right now. Over its close to 300 pages, he touches on the dangers posed by global warming, AI, authoritarianism, rapacious capitalism, human trafficking and war of all kinds, and he repeatedly emphasizes that it is the poor and the marginalized who are the most directly at risk from all of these dangers. But despite dealing in grim realities, this is fundamentally, as the title boldly states, a book about hope.
He acknowledges that “many people today, for various reasons, seem not to believe that a happy future is possible,” but he goes on to say, “These fears are to be taken seriously but are not invincible. They can be overcome only if we stop closing ourselves up.” Although fear is an understandable response to the problems of the world, it is also “a cage that excludes us from happiness and snatches away the future.” In place of living in fear, he encourages all people, but explicitly and especially Christians, to go out, form community, to be “restless and joyous,” and to find happiness and hope in “encounter[s] with others.”
At this particular moment in time in America, it is a challenge to feel particularly hopeful or optimistic, but reading this book reminded me that the correct response to our ongoing problems can be found only in community and in action.[1] For Pope Francis, the need to accompany others in both their suffering and their joy is central to his understanding of what it means to be human: “We are made of life and for life. We are made of relationships.” This is a defining aspect of his vision for the church as well; early in his pontificate he spoke of the church as a field hospital, and “Hope” reaffirms this idea, both for the church as an institution and for individual Christians.
He challenges all Catholics to go out and interact with the poor and the marginalized; to embrace what he calls a “culture of encounter.” He repeatedly invokes the idea that “No one can save themself alone,” and goes on to demonstrate this truth by relating numerous personal encounters that shaped his understanding of the world and of his faith.
Many of the personal stories he shares throughout the book are about meeting someone who has experienced some form of trauma and reflecting on how this encounter changed him. Often, he is able to use his power and influence, as a bishop, or as pope, to change these people’s lives — perhaps most memorably in the case of three Syrian families trapped in limbo in a refugee camp on Lesbos, who he brings to the Vatican — but rather than focusing primarily on how his actions helped those in need, he discusses how these encounters changed him personally: helped him to grow in faith, and to understand new things about the nature of suffering, and Christ’s presence in the world, and the church’s need to accompany the people at the margins.
He recognizes that this is not necessarily easy, and that — particularly for many young people — all levels of real life personal interaction have become challenging. He writes, “We live today in a time when it’s easy to cut ourselves off, to create links that are virtual, remote. Theoretically in contact, but practically alone.” Indeed, reading certain sections of “Hope” called to mind the U.S. Surgeon General’s recent report on the “Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” gripping America, in which half of U.S. adults, and a greater percentage of teens, reported feelings of loneliness and isolation, with “only 39% of adults in the U.S. [reporting] that they felt very connected to others.”
[Pope Francis] challenges all Catholics to go out and interact with the poor and the marginalized; to embrace what he calls a “culture of encounter.”
Social isolation leads not only to numerous negative health outcomes (the report states that the “mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day”), but also to increasing polarization and the “fraying of the social fabric.” His autobiography repeatedly touches on these widespread societal problems, and Pope Francis’ invocation of the “culture of encounter” is a practical response to them.
One (perhaps surprising) concrete example he uses as a means of encouraging these moments of encounter is his own passion for sports. Pope Francis clearly loves soccer — both playing and watching. He devotes one whole chapter (out of only 25) to his love of the beautiful game, reveling in recounting his own childhood pickup games in the barrio (despite admitting to being a pata dura — a player with two left feet) and the regional and national soccer stars of his youth. He posits playing games, of any sort, as a good way to foster actual physical connection with others:
“Sports typically unite rather than divide. They build bridges and not walls. Every genuine social activity militates against the incivility of rejection and prejudice. It favors the culture of encounter, which corresponds with the deeper and more intimate essence of our being, naturally directed toward relationship, interaction, and discovery of the other.”
Of course, not all kids (or adults) play sports, and it is not only in sports that these kinds of encounters take place. But the underlying challenge here is an important one — to participate in “genuine social activities” in order to foster personal relationships in our lives, and to help our children do the same. If loneliness and isolation give rise to despair, alienation and anger, becoming actively engaged like this leads to hope, and to love, and ultimately, to “a revolution.”
Throughout “Hope,” Pope Francis shares many of his own personal prayers, including the one he wrote on the occasion of his own ordination, which contains the striking line, “I believe that other people are good, and that I should love them without fear, and without ever betraying them to seek security for myself.” This desire to see the good in others, to reject fear and the desire for personal security, and to embrace love of the vulnerable other, is a throughline in the story of his life. May this book, and even more powerfully the example set by Pope Francis’ entire life, serve as a witness to all of us in this time of crisis.
[1] There are any number of places in the book where the pope’s words feel directly applicable to our current ongoing crisis, but this passage serves as a fitting summary of his indictment of the current global systems of power and how they seek to divide and isolate us in order to induce apathy, and thereby better wield control, alongside his call to communal action of resistance:
“I say to men and women of every part of the world, especially young people: Don’t believe those who tell you that nothing can change, or that those who fight for peace are naive people, ‘good souls.’ Don’t yield to those who will have you believe that it makes sense to live a life against others or without others, against peoples or without them. Those who claim this pretend to be strong, but they are weak. They may even pretend to be wise, but they are mad. Sometimes they are interested madmen, who look after the schemes and the interests, often sinister, of those who manufacture violence and trample on peace with deals: Behind so many wars carried out ‘for the people’ or ‘for security’ there are above all petty personal or political dividends. Don’t be satisfied with their feeble, deceptive dreams that are destined to create new nightmares. Instead, dream bigger dreams. War is madness, peace is rational, because it reflects and fulfills human nature and people’s natural aspirations. It is a dream that is dreamed with eyes open, in the light of day, dreamed together, always in the plural.”
