Renata Steffens
Pope Francis waves to visitors gathered to pray the Angelus in St Peter’s Square June 16, 2024. Photo: CNS/Vatican Media)
The first autobiography written by a sitting pope will be published globally on January 14, 2025. In his memoir Hope, Pope Francis will talk about his life from childhood to the present day, covering the whole of his papacy.
“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,” Pope Francis said. “In every page, in every passage, it is also the book of those who have travelled with me, of those who came before, of those who will follow.”
The book will be published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin General, and took six years to be written. The choice of publishing it in January 2025 was thought to coincide with the 2025 Jubilee.
Written with Carlo Musso, former Non-Fiction Editorial Director of Piemme and Sperling & Kupfer and then founder of the independent publisher Libreria Pienogiorno, the book was intended to be published after the Pope’s death.
“But the new Jubilee of Hope announced for 2025, and the needs of our times, have moved him to make this precious legacy available now,” the UK publisher said in a statement.
Mr Musso said: “It has been a long, intense adventure that has taken up the past six years: work on writing it began in March 2019 and will be completed in the forthcoming weeks.”