Peter Costello
Dear Pope Francis: The Pope Answers Letters from Children Around the World
by Pope Francis in conversation with Antonio Spadaro SJ (Messenger Publications / Jesuits in Ireland, €14.99)
It is not unusual for recent Popes to be associated with books for children. We had, for instance, a rather charming book about Pope Benedict’s cat – cats have long had a special place in his life.
But this new book from Pope Francis, like so much in his pontificate, strikes a new note, but one with ancient echoes.
We are told that one hot day in Rome last August – and Rome in August is a sweltering place indeed – he and Fr Spadaro, his amanuensis on the project, sat down, refreshed with apricot juice, to go through some 259 illustrated letters from children around the world.
There was one – included in the book – which was from a girl in Galway. Clara, aged 11, wrote “A Phápa Proinsias, a cara, An airíonn tú mar Phápa gur tú athair ag an domhain iomlán? Mise le Mheas, Clara.”
This was illustrated with a little picture of Clara with her father and mother, or perhaps older sister – which is how the Pope sees it.
To this the Pope replied: “Every priest likes to feel that he is a father. Spiritual fatherhood is truly important. I feel it deeply: I couldn’t think of myself in any other way except as a father. And I very much like your drawing with a big heart in which there’s a dad with two little girls. Are you the one with the teddy bear? Yes, Clara, I like being a dad. Franciscus.”
The Pope’s open sincerity is evidenced in his answer to the little Irish girl. But as he and Fr Spadaro realised the questions posed by these young people were often difficult ones, which go to the very heart of things, in ways grown-ups often avoid.
Ryan aged 8 in Canada asked: “what did God do before the world was made?” Now there is a question which even the most learned theologian would hesitate before answering.
The Pope’s answer carries with it echoes of the opening of the Gospel of John: “before creating anything, God loved. That’s what God was doing: God was loving. God always loves. God is love. So when God began making the world, he was simply expressing his love. Before doing anything else, God was love, and God was loving.”
This is an important theological concept expressed with gracious simplicity.
Ivan, a 13-year-old boy in China, asked another important question. “Will my grandpa, a non-Catholic who is not a person willing to do something evil, go to Heaven when he dies? In other words, if someone never makes any penances, how big a sin must he commit for him to go down to Hell?”
Pope Francis replies that Jesus loves us so very much, and he wants all of us to go to Heaven. God’s will is that everybody would be saved.
“Now appearances can certainly deceive us. For example, some people think that because you don’t follow every Church rule to the letter, you will automatically go to Hell. But in fact Jesus is beside us throughout our lives – to the very last moment! – to save us.”
He tells Ivan about the encounter of the Curé d’Ars with the woman whose husband had killed himself. “She was desperate because she thought that her husband had certainly ended up in Hell. But Father John Maria, who was a saint, said to her, ‘Look, between the bridge and the river, there is the mercy of God’.”
Mercy
This echoes St Augustine’s expression: “Misericordia Domini inter pontem et fontem” – between the bridge and the river the mercy of the Lord; later recast as the English expression, “Twixt the stirrup and the ground, mercy I asked and mercy found”.
And here, for readers young and old, might be a motto for the Year of Mercy. Indeed though this book is aimed at children, many adults reading it with them may find in it unexpected and moving reflections about a multitude of things, for it provides insights of a special kind into just how Pope Francis sees the world.
