Hope: The Autobiography

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The book is enhanced by remarkable photographs, including private and unpublished material made personally available by Pope Francis himself.

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, joined the 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.＂

Hope waswritten in collaboration with Carlo Musso and is being published simultaneously in major languages in over eighty countries.