Pope Francis noticed clergymen’ embrace of the trimmings of energy as a “most cancers” corroding the Roman Catholic Church, in keeping with a best-selling Spanish creator who travelled to Mongolia with the pontiff.
Javier Cercas, a journalist and novelist who was raised in a religious Catholic family however is himself an atheist, was invited to affix Francis on the primary go to by a pope to Mongolia in August-September 2023.
The go to gave rise to a e book — translated as “God’s Madman on the Finish of the World” — that’s half travelogue, half memoir, half historic exploration.
Printed in Spanish earlier this yr, and translated into Italian, it has been flying off the cabinets since Francis’s demise on April 21 on the age of 88.
In an interview in Bogota on Tuesday, Cercas stated that in the course of the journey, he found he had a number of issues in frequent with the pontiff.
They each preferred to take naps, loved the works of Argentine literary nice Jorge Luis Borges, and have been “deeply anticlerical.”
Cercas, 63, stated that Francis seen “the perverse concept that the priest is above the trustworthy” as “a most cancers inside the Church.”
All through his papacy, the so-called “pope of the poor” had excoriated the clergy for placing themselves above the flock and changing into captivated with symbols of energy.
In a speech to a church synod in October 2023, he referred to as it a “scandal” to see younger clergymen shopping for lace vestments from Rome tailors.
Cercas — who rose to fame in 2001 with “Troopers of Salamina,” a novel set in the course of the Spanish Civil Struggle that was later made into a movie — stated he agreed to accompany the pope to Mongolia on one situation.
He wished Francis to reply a query for his religious mom: would she be reunited with Cercas’s father on the finish of her days?
The query of whether or not Heaven exists was the topic of a lot dialogue between the author and the pope — and have become a recurring theme within the e book.
Cercas despatched the pope a signed copy of the work two weeks earlier than his demise however believes the pontiff, who was already very unwell, by no means acquired round to studying it.
– The ‘Antichrist’ pope –
Cercas stated he discovered Francis to be a “very formidable man” with a “very robust” character who staunchly defended his proper to crack jokes, even when confronted with adversity or delicate topics.
He described the Argentine pontiff as a “revolutionary” who espoused a “primitive Christianity” that gave satisfaction of place to the “destitute, the poor, the prostitutes.”
However he additionally acknowledged that Francis had didn’t considerably reform the Church, blaming “brutal resistance” from the Catholic hierarchy who, he stated, handled Francis because the “Antichrist.”
Cercas believes that the cardinals who will convene in Rome subsequent week to decide on Francis’s successor will go for “a timid reformer, or somebody who seems as a reformer, however behaves like a conservative.”
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