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Hope

The Autobiography

Author Pope Francis, Jorge Mario Bergoglio
Translated by Richard Dixon
with Carlo Musso
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Hardcover
$32.00 US
Random House Group | Random House
On sale Jan 14, 2025 | 320 Pages | 9780593978771
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pope Francis originally intended this exceptional book to appear only after his death, but the needs of our times and the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope have moved him to make this precious legacy available now.

“Hope vividly recreates the colorful world where the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio grew up.”—The New York Times

Hope is the first autobiography in history ever to be published by a Pope. Written over six years, this complete autobiography starts in the early years of the twentieth century, with Pope Francis’s Italian roots and his ancestors’ courageous migration to Latin America, continuing through his childhood, the enthusiasms and preoccupations of his youth, his vocation, adult life, and the whole of his papacy up to the present day.

In recounting his memories with intimate narrative force (not forgetting his own personal passions), Pope Francis deals unsparingly with some of the crucial moments of his papacy and writes candidly, fearlessly, and prophetically about some of the most important and controversial questions of our present times: war and peace (including the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East), migration, environmental crisis, social policy, the position of women, sexuality, technological developments, the future of the Church and of religion in general.

Hope includes a wealth of revelations, anecdotes, and illuminating thoughts. It is a thrilling and very human memoir, moving and sometimes funny, which represents the “story of a life” and, at the same time, a touching moral and spiritual testament that will fascinate readers throughout the world and will be Pope Francis’s legacy of hope for future generations.

The book is enhanced by remarkable photographs, including private and unpublished material made personally available by Pope Francis himself.
Introduction

All Is Born to Blossom

The book of my life is the story of a journey of hope, a journey that I can’t imagine separated from that 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.

An autobiography is not our private story, but rather the baggage we carry with us. And memory is not just what we recall, but what surrounds us. It speaks not only about what has been but about what will be. Memory, in the words of a Mexican poet, is a present that never ceases to pass.

It seems like yesterday, and yet it’s tomorrow.

People often say “wait and hope”—so much so that the word esperar in Spanish means both “to hope” and “to wait”—but hope is above all the virtue of movement and the engine of change: It’s the tension that brings together memory and utopia to truly build the dreams that await us. And if a dream fades, we need to go back and dream it again, in new forms, drawing with hope from the embers of memory.

We Christians must know that hope doesn’t deceive and doesn’t disappoint: 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.
Copyright © 2025 by Pope Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Pope Francis was born in Buenos Aires on December 17, 1936, son of Italian migrants, the first of five children born in the working-class barrio of Flores. He qualified as a chemical technician, graduated in philosophy in 1963, became a priest in 1969, was named provincial of the Jesuits of Argentina in 1973, was named auxiliary bishop in 1992, archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998, created cardinal in 2001, and since March 13, 2013, Bishop of Rome and the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church. For 2025, the twelfth year of his papacy, Pope Francis has announced a new Jubilee with the motto “Pilgrims of Hope.” View titles by Pope Francis
Jorge Mario Bergoglio is the first Latin American to be elected to the chair of Peter. A native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, he was ordained as a priest in 1969. He served as head of the Society of Jesus in Argentina from 1973 to 1979. In 1998 he became the archbishop of Buenos Aires, and in 2001 a cardinal. Following the resignation of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, February 28, 2013, the conclave elected Bergoglio, who chose the papal name Francis in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi. He is the first pope to be a Jesuit, to come from the Americas, and to come from the Southern Hemisphere. View titles by Jorge Mario Bergoglio

About

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pope Francis originally intended this exceptional book to appear only after his death, but the needs of our times and the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope have moved him to make this precious legacy available now.

“Hope vividly recreates the colorful world where the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio grew up.”—The New York Times

Hope is the first autobiography in history ever to be published by a Pope. Written over six years, this complete autobiography starts in the early years of the twentieth century, with Pope Francis’s Italian roots and his ancestors’ courageous migration to Latin America, continuing through his childhood, the enthusiasms and preoccupations of his youth, his vocation, adult life, and the whole of his papacy up to the present day.

In recounting his memories with intimate narrative force (not forgetting his own personal passions), Pope Francis deals unsparingly with some of the crucial moments of his papacy and writes candidly, fearlessly, and prophetically about some of the most important and controversial questions of our present times: war and peace (including the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East), migration, environmental crisis, social policy, the position of women, sexuality, technological developments, the future of the Church and of religion in general.

Hope includes a wealth of revelations, anecdotes, and illuminating thoughts. It is a thrilling and very human memoir, moving and sometimes funny, which represents the “story of a life” and, at the same time, a touching moral and spiritual testament that will fascinate readers throughout the world and will be Pope Francis’s legacy of hope for future generations.

The book is enhanced by remarkable photographs, including private and unpublished material made personally available by Pope Francis himself.

Excerpt

Introduction

All Is Born to Blossom

The book of my life is the story of a journey of hope, a journey that I can’t imagine separated from that 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.

An autobiography is not our private story, but rather the baggage we carry with us. And memory is not just what we recall, but what surrounds us. It speaks not only about what has been but about what will be. Memory, in the words of a Mexican poet, is a present that never ceases to pass.

It seems like yesterday, and yet it’s tomorrow.

People often say “wait and hope”—so much so that the word esperar in Spanish means both “to hope” and “to wait”—but hope is above all the virtue of movement and the engine of change: It’s the tension that brings together memory and utopia to truly build the dreams that await us. And if a dream fades, we need to go back and dream it again, in new forms, drawing with hope from the embers of memory.

We Christians must know that hope doesn’t deceive and doesn’t disappoint: 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.
Copyright © 2025 by Pope Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Author

Pope Francis was born in Buenos Aires on December 17, 1936, son of Italian migrants, the first of five children born in the working-class barrio of Flores. He qualified as a chemical technician, graduated in philosophy in 1963, became a priest in 1969, was named provincial of the Jesuits of Argentina in 1973, was named auxiliary bishop in 1992, archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998, created cardinal in 2001, and since March 13, 2013, Bishop of Rome and the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church. For 2025, the twelfth year of his papacy, Pope Francis has announced a new Jubilee with the motto “Pilgrims of Hope.” View titles by Pope Francis
Jorge Mario Bergoglio is the first Latin American to be elected to the chair of Peter. A native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, he was ordained as a priest in 1969. He served as head of the Society of Jesus in Argentina from 1973 to 1979. In 1998 he became the archbishop of Buenos Aires, and in 2001 a cardinal. Following the resignation of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, February 28, 2013, the conclave elected Bergoglio, who chose the papal name Francis in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi. He is the first pope to be a Jesuit, to come from the Americas, and to come from the Southern Hemisphere. View titles by Jorge Mario Bergoglio

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