Pope Francis - Pope Francis : untying the knots : the struggle for the soul of Catholicism

Pope Francis

Untying the Knots The Struggle for the Soul of Catholicism

Paul Vallely

What reviewers said of the first edition of Paul Vallelys biography:
Pope Francis: Untying the Knots

Peter Stanford, The Sunday Times:

Paul Vallelys biography of Francis ... stands, in terms of seriousness of purpose and depth of understanding, head and shoulders above others.

Mark Lawson, The Guardian:

Reads like a lost, unexpectedly literate chapter of The Da Vinci Code ...

Tough-minded analysis ... lifts the book well above the nervous reverence of much papal biography, and should recommend it to an audience broader than Catholics

Michael Walsh, The Tablet:

Read this book, forget the rest.

Raymond A Schroth SJ, America, the US Jesuit magazine:

At last a book has put both Jorge Mario Bergoglio, SJ, and Pope Francis in context, and explained the mystery of this man who seems to have come from nowhere to lead the Catholic Church at a critical time.

Luke Coppen, editor of the Catholic Herald, in The Independent:

Vallely skilfully unravels the competing narrative threads, without ever oversimplifying either Argentine politics or the new Pontiffs complex personality ... a sophisticated biography.

John Wilkins, the Church Times:

in a different class from other biographies ... a compelling account.

The Economist:

This book demonstrates that Pope Francis is a tougher, more complex figure than meets the eye. A turbulent life has given the pontiff a subtle sense of the realities of power, and the courage to act on it. Anybody who reads this book will eagerly await his next move.

Tim Byron SJ, Thinking Faith, the online journal of the British Jesuits:

Untying the Knots is a stroke of genius. It expresses succinctly, but also with a certain profundity, the challenge at hand ... an engaging and thoughtful read throughout.

Tom Heneghan, religion editor, Reuters:

Paul Vallelys Untying the Knots fills the gaps left by instant books on Pope Francis.

John Cornwell, Times Literary Supplement:

Vallelys book is a formidable achievement.

James Carroll, The New Yorker:

indispensable

Julian Coman in The Observer:

A masterly biography

Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish:

The indispensable English-language biography of the Pope.

Eamon Duffy, The New York Review of Books:

Paul Vallelys Pope Francis: Untying the Knots was one of the earliest in the field. Admiring but keenly questioning, its judgments have worn well.

For Christine

without whom

nothing would be possible

and for Thomas

faith in the future

In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change,

and to be perfect is to have changed often.

John Henry Cardinal Newman, On the Development of Ideas,

from An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

Abbreviations

means euros.

$ means US dollars.

Other currencies are spelled out in the text.

First plate section

Second plate section

Wheres my briefcase? asked Pope Francis. The papal entourage had arrived at Fiumicino Airport in Rome for his first trip abroad. He had been Pope for just four months. He was bound for Rio de Janeiro where 3.5 million young people from 178 countries were waiting to greet him at World Youth Day which in 2013 was to be held in Brazil. The Pope and assistants had arrived from the Vatican by helicopter. And Francis could not find his briefcase. He looked preoccupied.

Its been taken on board the plane, a helpful aide explained.

But I want to carry it on, said the pontiff.

No need, its on already, the assistant replied.

You dont understand, said Francis. Go to the plane. Get the bag. And bring it back here please.

The press were already on the plane waiting, with the engines running, for the Pope to arrive so that Alitalia Flight AZ4000 could begin its 12-hour flight across the Atlantic. If anyone saw the bag being carried off they did not understand its significance. The journalists on board peered eagerly out of the windows of the Airbus 330 at the Pope on the tarmac below. He seemed engaged in desultory conversation with the Italian prime minister, Enrico Letta, who had come to see him off. Suddenly the press saw Pope Francis begin to move purposefully, with his characteristic rolling gait, through the crowd of functionaries to the aircraft. He was smiling and chatting with the prime minister now. In his left hand the Pope carried a black briefcase.

As Francis climbed the white aircraft steps, with a surprising steadiness for a man of 76 who suffers from sciatica, one reporter declared: Look, hes carrying his own bag. An excited ripple ran around the journalists as they craned forward to catch a glimpse through the aeroplane windows, sensing a story. Popes had never before carried their own luggage. Here was another precedent being set by the first pope from Latin America, who seemed, with every day that passed, to find new ways of disregarding the old familiar expectations of how pontiffs are supposed to be behave.

An hour and a half later, when the breakfast debris had been cleared away, Pope Francis made his way to the back of the plane to hold an impromptu press conference. His predecessor Benedict XVI had spoken to the press on such journeys but in those days all the questions had to be submitted in advance. With Francis no notice was necessary; he would tackle any question on the hoof. He talked about young people who had no jobs and who felt discarded by a throwaway society in which old people had long been treated as similarly unimportant and disposable. Then he answered an array of questions from the reporters. What was in the black briefcase? one asked. The keys to the atomic bomb arent in it, Francis joked. So what did it contain? My razor, my breviary, my diary, a book to read on St Thrse of Lisieux to whom I am devoted I always take this bag when I travel. Its normal. We have to get used to this being normal, he added. Normal for a pope.

It is a difficult business being normal if you are the leader of the worlds biggest religious denomination and also a head of state. But Francis has presented himself to the world as an icon of simplicity and humility, eschewing papal limousines and the grand Apostolic Palace and instead being driven in a Ford Focus and living in the Vatican guest house, Casa Santa Marta. The lifestyle of the Pope who wants what he has called a poor Church, for the poor is so simple it borders on severity.

But, as the story of the briefcase shows, it can be a complex business being simple. And there is much more to humility than mere self-effacement. Papa Francesco there is no-one like you, a man called out to him in St Peters Square one day. With lightning speed the Pope riposted: And theres no-one like you either. As Francis has shown, you can choose humility, even when it does not come naturally to you. There can be what you might call an option for humility. It is one which, 25 years ago, Francis chose when he was cast into the wilderness after over a decade as the leader of Argentinas Jesuits.

If that sounds convoluted it is because there is a tortuous and tortured story behind the journey from the boy christened Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936 to the man anointed Pope by the Roman Catholic Church in 2013. To tell it I have avoided the reverential approach, and tried to see him as the normal man he is, with his share of human frailties. In the course of Bergoglios journey, as he admitted in 2010, he made hundreds of errors along the way. And, as he then revealed in his first interview as Pope, he lived a time of great interior crisis when he was sent into exile by the Jesuits after a massive split developed among Argentinas Jesuits under his leadership more than two decades ago. Some biographers of Francis have produced accounts which emphasize the Popes virtues, glossing over his self-confessed errors and weaknesses, and minimizing the areas in which he has changed over the years. They paint him as a cypher of Catholic orthodoxy and unflagging continuity with previous popes. By contrast Pope Francis himself is quite keen to be publicly critical of some of his own attitudes and actions in the past. Those errors, changes and that great interior crisis in Crdoba on which this edition throws new light show how Pope Francis was reshaped and revitalized. Far from seeing the changes Francis has made in his life as a sign of weakness this book portrays them as a sign of strength. He has learned from his mistakes and from experience, a quality which is admirable rather than something which diminishes the man as hagiographers seem to fear. Francis changed himself and now he wants the Church he so loves to change in the same way.