"Life" and "Hope" by Pope Francis

[Doom]

Has anyone read one or both of these official memoirs by Pope Francis? I won't labor the point that they weren't really written by Pope Francis but by a ghost writer, because we tend to take for granted that whenever a book title by a famous person who is not an author contains the words "as told to" in the title, the second person named is the real author, but it is based on interviews with the famous person. And given that Francis was not a good writer, I'd rather it be written by someone who is. John Paul II was also not a very good writer, but that didn't prevent him from writing several books and encyclicals, which are all very difficult to read as a result.

I own both books, in hardcover, but so far I have only read the first and shortest volume, "Life", and I have to say, I am surprised by how revealing this book is; he says the kinds of stuff that Popes have never said before. For example, he says that he stopped watching television in his 30s when he saw a sexy scene on Argentine TV, and he decided that priests shouldn't watch that kind of material, so he never saw Argentina win the World Cup in 1986 or 2022. And he says he didn't watch the coronation of King Charles III. The short book is filled with revealing little nuggets like this.

He also says that in the 2013 conclave, he almost won on the first ballot, but he didn't believe he would be elected; he figured they were just "provisional votes" because they hadn't decided whom to vote for, and his total would decline on the next ballot, but it kept increasing. As he tells the story, he was basically in denial until he reached 2/3.

I'm ready to start the longer book "Hope", supposedly an autobiography, which was originally not supposed to be published until after his death, it was published in February, only a couple of months befoe his death.