Pope Francis - My Door Is Always Open: A Conversation on Faith, Hope and the Church in a Time of Change

Translated from the Italian by Shaun Whiteside

In association with La Civilt Cattolica

After 19 September 2013, when the interview with Pope Francis was published in La Civilt Cattolica and fifteen other Jesuit journals in other countries, my life changed in a way. Apart from the media avalanche that I had to deal with, theres only one fact that Id like to stress: I received over a thousand emails, letters, tweets, texts, phone calls and posts on my Facebook profile from normal people, ordinary people, from all parts of the world, as well as from friends telling me some in 140 characters, some in long letters about their experience of the interview.

I have to admit naively that I hadnt expected it, and what I experienced went far beyond anything I could have imagined. Some told me how moved they were; some had left the Church years before, some had even left the priesthood, still others were agnostics who expressed a desire to read the Gospel after reading the interview, some were worried about the Popes openness, still others thanked me for the energy that the Popes words had given them. But above all I had lots of messages from people who were ill and sensed some hope. When a journalist called it an extraordinary scoop, I felt the need to reply straight away: No! It was and remains a great spiritual experience.

Once during a television debate I said as a joke: The experience was so rich that I could write a book about it. From that moment lots of people seriously encouraged me to do it, and in a hurry. This book is the fruit of those words of encouragement. It contains the text of the interview, with the correction of a few typos. But in reality I see this as an opportunity to revisit the interview while going into greater detail and illustrating its contents. Ill try to explain myself: interviewing Pope Francis is, lets put it this way, impossible. His original answers are rarely brief sentences in reply to a precise question. The Pope is volcanic, he likes to enter into dialogue, to open doors and windows, do an abrupt turn, but above all enter into a dialectic and remember personal details. He doesnt engage in dialogue without referring to some sort of concrete experience. He can write more abstractly, but not when hes involved in a dialogue. His type of reasoning isnt based on abstract concepts, its a reflection and an exchange about real life. At least thats my experience of three afternoons of dialogue with him.

Our discussion, in its published form, is therefore the reliable and organic trace, revised by the Pope, of a dialogue which, for me, remains an inexhaustible seam of content and information. For various reasons, especially to avoid accumulating too much layered information, anecdotes, gestures, and expressions were left out of the final text In fact the published interview contains a number of them: I preferred a narrative style so that I had the chance of putting them in. However, others were left out. And also omitted was the specific reference, which emerged in the dialogue, to speeches, homilies and texts that Jorge Mario Bergoglio wrote either as a Jesuit priest or as Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

Now, in this definitive edition, Ive tried to recover in the form of a comment everything that had gone missing, so as to clarify retrospectively the content of the interview, not only from the cultural and pastoral point of view, but also from the human and biographical perspective. The Pontiff has authorized the restoration of those passages. I have also included a kind of behind the scenes for the interview itself. Ive developed a hermeneutics of the words of Pope Francis in the light of the dense weave of texts from prior to his election, and also of his interventions as Pontiff. I have checked that this method can be useful in gaining a better understanding of what the Pope says, particularly in a number of passages which are controversial, or in which he refers to things or events that the reader may not necessarily know.

In its own way, the interview is a little miracle. It emerged from the idea that the editors of the cultural journals of the European Jesuits had, along with those of Chile and Venezuela, of interviewing the Pope. We then invited our American journal to join in, because I knew that its staff planned to send some written questions to the Pope and were wondering how to go about it. So it was a project that implied not only the interview, but also its swift translation into various languages with a view to publication in sixteen journals at the same time. And so it came to pass at 17.00 hours (Roman time) on 19 September 2013. The miracle was certainly the concerted action by all these journals from all over the world, but also the fact that there were no leaks of information very easy and always possible, given the complexity of the operation that involved whole editorial teams, translators and technicians.

To tell the truth, we knew that a major daily newspaper had come into possession of the whole text about eight hours before its first official release, but also that it would be kept under embargo until 17.00 hours out of respect for the Pope. This too, perhaps, was a miracle: a daily newspaper giving up such a scoop.

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Since its foundation in 1850, the journal La Civilt Cattolica has always enjoyed a special connection with the Apostolic See, but this is the first time it has published an interview with the Pontiff. We Jesuits on the editorial team because the editorial team has always been composed entirely of Jesuits are happy with this event. For my part, I present this book to the reader as if sharing an experience, and with the gratitude of one who is still, thanks to messages from so many people, enjoying a time of grace.

Father Antonio Spadaro S.J.

Its Monday 19 August 2013. Pope Francis has given me an appointment at 10.00 a.m. in Santa Marta. But I have inherited from my father the need always to turn up early. The people who welcome me offer me a seat in a little drawing room. I dont have to wait for long, and after a few minutes Im accompanied to the lift. In those two minutes I have had time to remember how, in Lisbon, at a meeting of the editors of some Jesuit journals, the idea had come up of publishing an interview with the Pope all at the same time. I had talked with the other editors, suggesting a few questions that expressed everyones interests. I leave the lift and see the Pope already waiting for me in the doorway. Or rather, in fact, I had the peaceful sense of not having passed through any doors.

I step into his room, and the Pope offers me a seat in an armchair. He sits on a higher, stiff-backed chair, and talks about the problems he has with his back. The setting is simple, austere. The working space on the desk is small. Im struck by the basic nature not only of the furniture, but of the things as well. There are few books, few papers, few objects.

Among them an icon of St Francis, a statue of Our Lady of Lujn, patron saint of Argentina, a crucifix and a statue of St Joseph asleep, very like the one I saw in his room as rector and Provincial Superior at the Colegio Mximo in San Miguel. Bergoglios spirituality consists not of harmonized energies, as he would call them, but of human faces: Christ, St Francis, St Joseph, Mary.

The Pope welcomes me with the smile that he has shown by now all over the world, the one that opens hearts. We start talking about lots of things, but above all about his trip to Brazil. The Pope sees it as a real grace. I ask him if he has rested. He tells me he has, that hes well, but above all that World Youth Day was a mystery to him. He tells me hes never been used to talking to so many people: I can look at individual persons, one at a time, to come into contact in a personal way with the person I have before me. I am not used to the masses. I tell him its true, and that its plain to see, that everyones struck by it.