Pope in the Ghetto – excerpt from Francis' autobiography

Pope Francis was born in 1936 and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Baryon [the neighborhood] “Flores” – in a simple neighborhood. In 1958 he became a Jesuit novice; he was ordained a priest in 1969, became archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and was elected pope in 2013. But, during these seven decades, shepherd Argentina and its people always remained close to his heart. In this excerpt from his autobiography Hope [Hope], published in January, he describes for the first time his involvement in that world.

By: Pope Francis (1936-2025)
The fragment was published in the newspaper The Daily Telegraph
Translated from English: Agron Shala / Telegrafi.com

Barium It was a complex, multiethnic and multicultural microcosm. Our family always had very good relations with the Jews, whom we called “Russians” in “Flores,” because many of them had come from the Odessa area – where a large Jewish community lived, a large number of whom would be massacred by the occupying Romanian and Nazi forces during World War II. Many of the customers of the factory where my father worked were Jews employed in the textile industry, and many of them were our friends.

We also had many Muslim friends, even among the boys in our group, who to us were “Turks,” since they usually came with passports from the old Ottoman Empire. They were Syrians and Lebanese, and then there were Iraqis and Palestinians. In fact, the first Arabic-language newspaper in Buenos Aires dates back to the beginning of the 20th century. Is the Turk there? Will the Russian come too? in Baryon In our world, being different was the norm and we respected each other.

The district, like the street market, was a concentration of human filth. Workers, humble, believers, happy. There were four "old single women", ladies [misses] Alonso, devoted women of Spanish descent who had emigrated to “La Plata”. They were skilled embroiderers, with extraordinary skill. A stitch and a prayer, a prayer and a stitch. Mama [Mamá] sent my sister to them to learn, but Marta was very upset and complained: “Mama, those women don’t talk at all, they don’t say a word, they just pray”!

And then, almost at the corner of our street, there was a hairdresser [Barber Shop – hairdresser] , with an apartment next door; the hairdresser was called Margot, and she had a sister who was a prostitute. She combined her work with services such as washing, cutting and styling hair. They were very nice people, and my mother sometimes went there to have her hair done. One day, Margot gave birth to a child. I couldn't figure out who the father was, and this surprised and intrigued me, but shepherd she didn't seem too concerned about it.

In the same building, in another apartment, lived a man married to a woman who had been a vaudeville dancer and who was also known as a prostitute: she was still young when she died of tuberculosis, devastated by that life. I remember her hasty and sad funeral: the man seemed withdrawn, silent and distant, worried only about not catching the disease and about the young woman who had replaced the deceased. The woman's mother, Bertha, who was French, had also been a dancer and was said to have performed in Parisian nightclubs. She now worked as a maid in other people's homes, for long hours, but she had an extraordinary demeanor and dignity.

Since my childhood, I have known both the dark side and the light side of existence, both in the same place. Even the world of prisons: the brushes we used to clean our clothes we bought from the inmates at the local prison, and that's how I first learned that such a thing existed.

There were two other girls in the neighborhood, also sisters, who worked as prostitutes. But these were high-class: They organized meetings by phone, and agreed to pick them up by car. They were called “la Síchi” [la Ciche] and “la Porota” and the whole shepherd knew them.

Years passed and one day, when I was already assistant to the bishop of Buenos Aires, the phone rang at the episcopal palace: it was The Juror who was looking for me. I had completely forgotten what she looked like; I hadn't seen her since she was a young girl. "Hey, don't you remember me? I heard you were made bishop, I want to see you"! Everything happened so quickly. Come, I said, and I waited for her in the bishop's palace. I was still in "Flores"; it must have been 1993.

"You know," she told me, "I have been a prostitute everywhere, even in the United States. I made money, then I fell in love with an older man, who was my lover, and when he died, my life changed. Now I am retired. I go and clean the elderly in nursing homes, those who have no one to take care of them. I don't go to mass much and I have used my body for everything, but now I want to take care of the bodies that no one takes care of." A modern-day Magdalene.

She told me that her sister's life too, How are you?, had changed, and that she spent her time praying in church: “She has become a self-proclaimed saint [chupacirios], who thinks he has superior morals! Tell him to get off his ass and do something for others”! Her language was picturesque and imaginative, with four dirty words for every five she said. And, she was sick.

Once, later, when I was already cardinal of Buenos Aires, The Juror She called me again to say that she wanted to organize a party with her friends and asked me if I would go and celebrate mass for them, at the parish church of San Ignacio [Iglesia de San Ignacio de Loyola]. I said yes, of course, while I was thinking about who these friends might be. “But come early, because many of them want to confess,” she added.

During that period, I often met Át Pepe – Don José di Paola – a young priest whom I had known since the beginning of my ministry as bishop. Since 1997, he had been parish priest at the Virgen de Caacupé in the “Villa 21” neighborhood. He is a man of God, one of those priests who have always worked in out of misery [villas miserias – poor neighborhoods], in the shanty towns that are found around Buenos Aires: There are about thirty of them in the capital alone and about a thousand in the entire province. lines are a dense mass of people, filled with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. Most of the families there come from Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru and the interior of Argentina. They have never seen the state – and when the state is absent for 40 years, when it does not provide housing, lighting, gas or transport, it is not that difficult to create a parallel structure in its place. Over time, large quantities of drugs began to circulate, and drugs bring violence and destroy families. Pako [paco], or “cocaine paste” – the waste product of cocaine production for rich markets – is the drug of the poor, it is a plague that deepens despair.

There, in those fringes that should increasingly become new centers of the Church, a group of laypeople and priests like Át Pepe live and witness to the Gospel every day, among those excluded from an economy that kills. Those who say that religion is the opium of the people – a comforting tale to keep them away – would do well to look around first. lines: they would see how, thanks to religion and pastoral and civic commitment, these run-down neighborhoods have made incredible progress, despite extraordinary difficulties. They would also experience great cultural enrichment. They would discover for themselves how every service, like religion itself, is always an encounter, and that we ourselves are the ones who have the most to learn from the poor. When someone says that I am a Pope Francis [Pope Villero – the poor neighborhoods], I only pray that I may always be worthy of this.

Meetings with Át Pepe always enriched my soul and spiritual life. Over time, our friendship deepened. That year – I believe it was 2001 and Pepe had been serving as come here [Curé Villero – a priest of the poor neighborhoods] – he was going through a difficult and complicated period of crisis in his priestly vocation, which he later explained himself. He spoke openly to his superiors, asked to be released from his duties as a priest, and went to work in a shoe factory. When he explained this to me, I simply said to him: come and see me, whenever you want. And so he did. On some occasions, after leaving work, he would walk for two hours and come to the cathedral. I would wait for him, open the door for him, listen to him, and we would talk. But always freely.

Meeting after meeting, month after month, time passed until one evening he came and said: “Oh, here I am… I would like to celebrate Mass.” We hugged. “Do you want to celebrate it together on July 20, Friendship Day [Fiesta del Amigo]?” I asked him. He was happy. “Then let’s do it at Saint Ignatius,” I said. “I’ll celebrate Mass there because a lady from ‘Flores’ asked me to.” So we went together. We walked from the diocese headquarters along “Bolívar” street and arrived at the church: they were all former prostitutes and prostitutes who were members of the “syndicate.” And they all wanted to confess. It was a wonderful celebration. The Jury She was happy – almost in tears.

She called me for the last time a short time later, when she was in the hospital. “I called you to bring me the oil of the sick and communion, because, you know, this time I won’t make it.” She said all this while cursing a doctor and shouting at another patient; she had lost none of her vitality, not even in her last hours. Genio y figura hasta la sepultura, we say in Argentina – the same behaviors and reactions, throughout life and until the grave. But, she left for good – like the tax collectors and prostitutes who enter the Kingdom of God before us (Matthew 21:31). And, I loved her very much. Even today I do not forget to pray for her on the day of her death. /Telegraph/