“He gave me a big white box,” Francis writes. “Documents relating to the most difficult and painful situations. Cases of abuse, corruption, dark dealings, wrongdoing.
“Everything is here,” Francis remembers; “Now it’s your turn” to take care of it.
In the book, the pope writes that he felt “called to take responsibility for all the evils committed by certain priests,” CNN reported.
A photograph of the couple sitting with a white box between them fueled speculation at the time.
Francis, formerly known as Jorge Bergoglio, uses the new book to tell the story of his youth in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he grew up in a large family and was passionate about soccer and tango. He admits to fighting as a young man with a comrade who “even lost his mind” after hitting his head when he was thrown to the ground, and insists that even as leader of the Church, he still commits “errors and sins”.
“I feel that I have a reputation that I do not deserve, a public esteem of which I am not worthy,” Francis writes. “This is without a doubt my strongest feeling.”
The memoir recounts key moments of his papacy, including the two assassination attempts he faced during a visit to Iraq in 2021, as revealed last month in an extract from Italian daily Corriere delle Sera .
