Pope Francis to release ‘first memoir published by a sitting pontiff’ in January

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 16, 2024 / 17:40 pm

In January 2025, Pope Francis will become the first sitting pontiff to publish an autobiographical memoir, which will be titled “Hope.”

Random House Publishing announced the memoir’s unprecedented global release on Wednesday. The original plan, according to the publisher, had been to release the memoir after his death. However, the pope decided to publish it in light of the upcoming 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope. 

A jubilee year occurs every 25 years in the Catholic Church — although the Holy Father can declare them more often — and is a year of special grace and pilgrimage for members of the faithful. 

The memoir, which the Holy Father began work on in March 2019, will be available in more than 80 countries on Jan. 14, 2025. 

“The book of my life is the story of a journey of hope, a journey that I cannot separate from the journey of my family, of my people, of all God’s people. In every page, in every passage, it is also the book of those who have traveled with me, of those who came before, of those who will follow,” Pope Francis is quoted as saying in a Random House press release.

“An autobiography is not our own private story but rather the baggage we carry with us,” the pontiff continued. “And memory is not just what we recall but what surrounds us. It doesn’t speak only about what has been but about what will be. It seems like yesterday, and yet it’s tomorrow. All is born to blossom in an eternal springtime. In the end, we will say only: ‘I don’t recall anything in which You are not there.’” 

The announcement of the memoir comes after Francis’ last book, “Life: My Story Through History,” was published in March of this year. In that book, the Holy Father recounted his experience of major historical events including the 1976 Argentina coup d’etat, the conclave that elected him pope, and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Hope,” according to Random House, offers a unique perspective from the pontiff and contains “a wealth of revelations and unpublished stories” in which his own life is the principal focus. 

Co-written with Carlo Musso, founder of the independent Italian publishing house Libreria Pienogiorno, the memoir begins with the history of Francis’ family and their emigration from Italy to Latin America. It then proceeds through his childhood, adult life, vocational story, and the whole of his papacy to the present day.

As EWTN Vice President and Editorial Director Matthew Bunson commented earlier this year in the wake of several high-profile interviews by the pope and the release of “Life,” Francis’ presence in the media is not unique; his “deliberate and aggressive embrace of interview for television, radio, newspapers, and magazines” and eagerness to communicate on his own behalf is.

“Francis has forged his own path in communication and in governance,” Bunson wrote in a May 20 op-ed in the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner. “He is trying to shape how the world perceives him, how his reforms are received and implemented, and how permanent his program for the Church will be.”

“He unquestionably stands in continuity with the modern popes in his embrace of the media,” Bunson added, “but he is unprecedented in the way he goes about it.”