From the Irish nurse who struggled to feed him as a newborn to what he misses most from his previous life, the pontiff’s memoir is full of surprises
Pope Francis as a young seminarian at Villa Devoto, Argentina. Photo: Mondadori Portfolio/ Archivio GBB
The opening of Pope Francis’s memoir, a historic first for a sitting pontiff, sets out how he might easily have never been born. His grandparents, and their son Mario, Pope Francis’ father, had been booked to travel on the SS Principessa Mafalda, “the Italian Titanic”, which sank on its voyage from Genoa to Buenos Aires in 1927 with the loss of over 300 lives. They didn’t make the sailing, and wouldn’t migrate to Argentina until 1929. On such events does history turn.
Pope Francis is a divisive figure. For many, he is a spiritual leader of great integrity, who wishes to create a much more inclusive church and who has little time for the trappings of ecclesiastical privilege; an unstuffy pope who exhibits a keen social conscience while avoiding fixating on sexual morality.
