Pope's autobiography sheds light on his complex and contradictory mind

Hope, the Autobiography

By Pope Francis

Penguin/Viking £25

Hope, The Autobiography is billed as the first ever biography to be published by a serving pope, but it reminds me of the last book on Francis I read, based on interviews with the journalist Fabio Marchese Ragona: My Story Through History. We get some of the same accounts of his early life, his novitiate with the Jesuits, the junta, his admiration for Pedro Arrupe – the former Superior General of the Jesuits who was working in Hiroshima when the bomb landed – his election to the papacy, his love of music, his wide reading.