Hi, I’m Wayne Jones, and welcome to re:Christian, a critical and satirical reconsideration of Christianity, the Bible, and God. This is episode 20: “Surprising Revelations from the Pope’s New Autobiography.”
Pope Francis will publish his autobiography tomorrow, March 19. The book has a title that is both disingenuous and pretentious, and a subtitle that’s just pretentious, but also clunky. The title is Life. The pretention I read in the title is his setting himself up as a central figure in life generally, that is, the life of the world. Get over yourself, man. You got the job as pope with two and a half billion people already signed up for your cause, so it’s not as if you had to campaign for adherents. It’s admittedly a high-profile position but its effect on the life of the world is more minimal and less beneficent than you think it is.
The disingenuousness of the title derives from kind of the opposite meaning that it wants to get across. It’s the meaning something like “Well, That’s Life” if you were expressing it more fully, or even worse, “Life, Amirite?” There is a false modesty about it, as if the story about to be told is similar to the one experienced by Catholics either homeless on the street, or a husband and wife (both heterosexual) trying to raise five kids on $30,000 a year. The sanctimony is pure.
The subtitle is My Story Through History. Again the pretention is obvious: my simple life is historically important. But if I had been the editor, and oh, how I would have loved that dream job, I would have pointed out that the wording of that subtitle is ambiguous. Does it mean, my life lived through the various historical events of the world that I have witnessed? Or does it mean, using current history to explain why the story of my life unfolded the way it did? In Italian, it’s pretty much the same wording—pardon my pronunciation, but it’s La mia storia nella Storia—so the English translation is pretty direct.
I haven’t seen the book yet, but an anonymous source sent me a copy of the audiobook version of the book in English. In a few moments, I’ll share some excerpts from that audio, but first I wanted to share some of the other inflated language that the publisher and Francis (the Cardinals call him Franky) use in the promo language on Amazon. Here’s the promo:
For the first time, Pope Francis tells the story of his life as he looks back on the momentous world events that have changed history—from his earliest years during the outbreak of World War II in 1939 to the turmoil of today … Life is the story of a man and a world in dramatic change … The book opens with three-year-old Jorge in the kitchen with his mother in Argentina as World War II breaks out, and he goes on to witness several historic events: the fall of the Berlin Wall; Videla’s coup in Argentina; the moon landing in 1969 … Here are the frank assessments and intimate insights of a pastor reflecting on the Nazi extermination of the Jews … the Covid-19 pandemic [and] … the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI.
And it blathers on. I’m willing to bet his “frank assessments and intimate insights … on the Nazi extermination of the Jews” doesn’t mention anything about the Catholic Church’s cooperation and silence with the Nazis and its playing politics rather than taking a principled stand. One of Hitler’s biographers says that “the Catholic Church … [didn’t consider] it possible to take up an attitude of open opposition to the regime.” Yes, the Nazi regime.
Anyway, Catholic hypocrisy aside, here are a few excerpts from the audiobook that I am using sparingly so as not to betray the publishing insider who supplied me with the book. I commend the Pope for being candid and direct and honest about these revelations, which might cause some Catholics to view him or the church differently. In the first excerpt, he talks about his experience as a little boy in Buenos Aires (his name was Jorge Mario Bergoglio):
We were an upper middle class family and so my mother and father rightly taught me to disdain those beneath us in social status—the poor, the mere middle class, and especially the homeless. I spit in the hands of beggars when they held their dirty palms out to me, and when the child of a working class family who happened to attend my same school said hello to me in the corridor, I would ignore them and give a glare that my father had taught me. “They are not as good as you, Jorge,” he would tell me, “and so they deserve all the disrespect you have heave on them.” I took his admonition as serious, but sometimes we both chuckled with one of the servants about the wealth we lived in while others had to beg just to get some cornmeal. I still remember my father’s statement one time: “We are in the lap of luxury, son, and they are somewhere near the asshole or taint of luxury.” That one still makes me laugh.
As he grew older, his beliefs modulated, some hardening, some changing a little. When he was a Jesuit student at the Maximum College of St. Joseph in San Miguel, Argentina, he hung out with a rough crowd:
I was a good student at first, and the approval of my professors and my grades both reflected that. It was all B-plusses and A-minuses. Not bad for a rich kid who didn’t work too hard. In the last year, though, I started hanging out with the wrong crowd. Wrong in sense that they neglected study and did all kinds of things that neither the Old Testament God nor the New Testament Jesus would approve of. I suppose the worst was that we once got intoxicated and kicked a hobo to death. But there were other things, too, many having to do with the pleasures of the flesh. I had both a girlfriend and a sidepiece at the time, and I would often fornicate orally with the girlfriend and then tell her that I had to go out for cigarettes, at a store in Buenos Aires, about 30 km away. On the way I’d stop in at my sidepiece’s place and she’d reverse-cowboy-ride me till my seed exploded inside atop her fragrant furrows. I’d leave hastily, get the smokes, and return to my girlfriend without her suspecting a thing. Jesus, that one was dumb as they come.
The future pope did graduate from the college, his father’s money greasing a few senior hands so as to pass a student with an overall average of D, and he cleaned up his act a bit. Here’s a poignant and intimate admission:
When I had my SJ, that is, when I was graduated and a member of the Society of Jesus (aka Jesuit) cult within the Catholic Church, I decided to try to be a better person. Even at the age of 23, and you may not believe this, but even then I had a desire to be the head of the Catholic Church. Yes, the Pope. Il Papa! I loved the idea of in effect running my own bank for money laundering and secret hush payments, and even more the garb of the job. No tight suits. No shirts that reveal love handles and the like. A huge robe that hid many sins, so to speak, but also the tradition of the pope getting to choose his own custom-made shoes and never having to wear socks. I also imagined myself going commando most of the time: who needs underwear when your office attire is the dimensions of a mumu? The hats, well, the hats I would be fifty-fifty on. The little soft-tortilla one would probably cover my then bald spot, but that metre-high contraption would be a pain in the ass to get and keep on at the best of times. Anyway, minor thing: I would be no longer, in memory of my father, in just the lap of luxury, but I’d have access to her boobs as well.
I will leave it at that. I’m looking forward to listening to the rest of the book and to see the reception it gets in both religious and secular circles. All proceeds from the sale of the book are, by tradition, going to an unnamed account in the Vatican Bank.
And that’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. Check the show notes for a transcript, sources, and for how to contact me. And please join me again on Thursday.