Javier Cercas: “Spain has been one of the most reluctant countries to Pope Francis” | Culture | EUROtoday

In May 2023, within the Great Book Hall of Turin, a excessive place of the Church approached the author Javier Cercas to suggest a really particular project: enter the Vatican to make a e book about Pope Francis. “It was the first time that the Vatican offered such a thing,” stated Cercas (Ibahernando, Cáceres, 63 years outdated) in an encounter with 100 subscribers from El País held Thursday, wherein he broke off the origin and secrets and techniques of his final work, God’s madman on the finish of the world.

The subscribers of the newspaper, a lot of them with the e book underneath the arm, interrogated the author about his work and the Vatican secrets and techniques to which he had entry. “Many told me: how is it possible that an atheist as you are interested in this? The question is reverse: who would not be interested in an institution that has been completely decisive in the last 2,000 years of history?” He defined throughout the occasion, wherein Joseph Oughourlian, president of the Prisa Group; Pilar Gil, CEO in a rush medium; and the director of El País, Jan Martínez Ahrens.

God’s madman on the finish of the world It is a singular work. According to Cercas, which can also be a columnist of El País for 3 a long time, the objective was to not propaganda, however that he wrote with whole freedom, in his personal model, a e book in regards to the Pontiff. The author accepted with a really private situation: he wished to benefit from the journey to ask the Pope an intimate query that his mom, believer and just lately deceased, had all the time wished to reply: Is there an actual risk of reunion amongst family members after demise? “I am sure that I will meet again with my parents when I die,” he joked, answering a reader’s query.

The e book is a hybrid textual content that mixes power journey, biography, essay and autobiography. The title refers to Francisco himself as a disruptive determine inside the Church. “He has not done the revolution,” stated Cercas to the occasion presenter, El País journalist Sergio C. Fanjul. “Whoever thinks that a Pope can change the Church does not know the Church. But it has come to where it has been able.” The author slowly pointed to issues within the Catholic Church, an establishment that the author has identified in a manner that only a few can. “Interpreting the Church in terms of secular policy is a mistake, and leads to misunderstandings,” he mirrored. “We overvalue the political power of the Pope. He actually has no political power. And it is fine: to César what is from Caesar and God what is of God.”

Throughout the e book, fences attracts a deep and nuanced portrait of Pope Francis. Far from the institutional picture, it reveals a human pontiff, austere, uncomfortable for the conservative sectors of the Church. A Pope who rejects energy, fights clericalism and defends a imaginative and prescient nearer to its evangelical origins than to the Vatican constructions. “Francisco caused huge turbulence, and resistances. He always said: risk. Play it. And that raised blisters.” In Spain, based on Cercas, notably: “Spain has been one of the most reluctant countries to Francisco, together with the US.

“It is absurd to say that the Pope is correct -wing or left,” said Cercas when asked about Francisco’s political orientation. “Thinking is about being confused. Of course, it was near the left: he cared about migrants, for the poor … that’s the gospel. But it was towards abortion, divorce, euthanasia … pure reactionary thought,” explained the author of works such as Salamina soldiers, The monarch of the shadows o Anatomy of an instant.

“Francisco tried to return to the Christianity of Christ: Christ was a revolutionary, a harmful man. “This is obvious, but the Christianity we have known here is exactly the opposite: the one who has been next to power, and the rich,” he stated. “What we have known is a perversion of Christianity. A Garrafón Christianity.”

Asked about his opinion in regards to the new Pontiff, Leo XIV, Cercas is obvious: “He will follow Francisco’s path, but with more moderation.” One of the lads who has had essentially the most entry to probably the most necessary establishments within the West says it; A person who accompanied Francisco to the top of the world. A visit, and a e book, which the author joked, returned “exactly just as atheist. But much more anticlerical.”