Pope: Faith is not the opium of the people, but encounter and service

By Isabelle Piro

The “concentrate of humanity” experienced in the slums of Buenos Aires and the “arrow to the heart” experienced in Iraq in 2021 are central themes of the autobiography “Hope” of Pope Francis, written with Carlo Musso.

Published by Mondadori, an Italian publisher, the book will be released on January 14 in more than 100 countries.

On December 17, the Pope’s 88th birthday, two Italian newspapers, “La Repubblica” and “Il Corriere della Sera,” published some extracts.

Childhood in the Flores district

“When someone tells me that I’m a villero Pope, I pray to be worthy of it,” said Pope Francis, referring to the “complex, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural microcosm” of the Flores neighborhood in Buenos Aires, where he spent his childhood.

“Differences were normal and we respected each other,” he says, emphasizing his relationships with his Catholic, Jewish and Muslim friends.

“Contemporary Madeleines”

Pope Francis recounts his childhood seeing prostitutes on the streets of Buenos Aires, calling it a picture of the “darkest and most difficult side of existence.”

As bishop, he celebrated mass for some of these women who had reformed their lives.

He remembers a woman, named Porota, who told him: “I have worked as a prostitute everywhere, even in the United States. I made some money, then fell in love with an older man who was my lover. When he died, I changed my life. I now have a pension and I bathe elderly people in retirement homes who have no one to look after them. I don’t go to mass much and I used to do everything with my body, but now I want to take care of bodies that no one else cares about.

Pope Francis calls her a “contemporary Magdalene”. Porota called him one last time from the hospital, just before he died, to receive the anointing of the sick and communion.

“She is indeed dead – like “the tax collectors and the prostitutes” who “go before us into the kingdom of God” (Mt 21:31). I loved him dearly. Even today, I never forget to pray for her on the day she died,” he wrote.

Friendship with “Father Pepe”

The Pope recalls the prisoners who made clothes brushes and recounts his friendship with Father José de Paola, known as “Father Pepe”, parish priest of the Virgen de Caacupé, Villa 21. The Pope, then Jorge Mario Bergoglio, supported Father Pepe through a crisis vocation program.

Speaking of these liminal zones where “the State has been absent for forty years” and where drug addiction is “a scourge which multiplies despair”, the Pope affirms that “in these peripheries, of which the Church must increasingly make its center , a group of lay people and priests like Father Pepe live and witness to the Gospel every day, among those rejected by a murderous economy.

Religion is not the opium of the people; faith is an encounter

From these harsh realities emerges the truth that religion, as some claim, “is not the opium of the people, a comforting story to alienate individuals,” the Pope insists.

On the contrary, he says, “it is thanks to faith and this pastoral and civil commitment” that the villas “have progressed in unimaginable ways, despite enormous difficulties”. Just like faith, “each service is an encounter, and above all we can learn a lot from the poor”.

Travel to Iraq and “the arrow in the heart” of Mosul

From the drama of the urban suburbs to the devastation of Iraq, Pope Francis’ gaze remains fixed on a wounded humanity.

Reflecting on his historic apostolic journey to Iraq, March 5-8, 2021, Pope Francis describes the “arrow to the heart” represented by Mosul.

“One of the oldest cities in the world,” he says, “brimming with history and traditions, which saw different civilizations come and go and which was a symbol of peaceful coexistence of diverse cultures in one country – Arabs , Kurds, Armenians, Turks, Christians. , Syrians, appeared to me like a field of rubble after three years of occupation by the Islamic State, which had chosen it as its stronghold.”

Seen from a helicopter, he said the territory looked like “an x-ray of hatred, one of the most effective sentiments of our time.”

The poisonous fruits of war

The Pope recalls the difficult context of the visit, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and security concerns.

“I was advised against going to see almost everyone… but I felt I had to do it,” he wrote, referring to the land of Abraham, “the common ancestor of Jews, Christians and Muslims.

He discusses a warning from British intelligence about two planned assassination attempts during his visit to Mosul: one by a woman attached to explosives, the other involving a truck.

The two attackers were intercepted and killed by Iraqi police. “It struck me deeply,” underlines Pope Francis. “It was also a poisonous fruit of war.”

A call to prioritize reason over conflict

But in all this hatred, the Pope found a glimmer of hope during his March 6 meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf, a meeting that “the Holy See had been preparing for decades.”

Organized in a spirit of brotherhood at the home of Al-Sistani, it was “an eloquent gesture in the East, even more than declarations or documents, because it signifies friendship and belonging to the same family,” explains the Pope. “It did my soul good and made me feel honored.”

He recalls the common call of the Ayatollahs to the great powers “to abandon the language of war, favoring reason and wisdom”. The Pope expresses his appreciation for a phrase from their meeting: “Human beings are either brothers in religion or equal in creation.”

In addition to “Hope,” the life of Pope Francis will also be told in a film based on Life: My Story in History, an autobiography written with Fabio Marchese Ragona and published in March by HarperCollins.