Francis reveals himself to be a pope of two halves

The Pope’s autobiography is out and it’s still not entirely clear why. Carlo Musso, the ‘co-author’ of Hope: The Autobiography, says that it was originally intended to be published after his death, but on account of ‘the new Jubilee of Hope’ (the Jubilee Year), and the ‘circumstances of this moment’ (i.e. him not dying), it’s been brought forward.

Truth to tell it reads a bit scrappily, more like a series of interviews, with occasional errors – the Arian heresy, for instance, is not the ‘Aryan’ heresy, presumably a Hitlerian thing. The book is up to date, taking on board his encounter with clerical sex abuse survivors in Belgium last year (he doesn’t mention his brutal going-over by his horrible Belgian hosts) and his meeting a few months ago with transexuals.

For all that, the book covers quite a lot that he’s talked about before, but there are things of interest here.