In May 2023, in the Great Book Hall of Turin, a high position of the Church approached the writer Javier Cercas to propose a very special assignment: enter the Vatican to make a book about Pope Francis. “It was the first time that the Vatican offered such a thing,” said Cercas (Ibahernando, Cáceres, 63 years old) in an encounter with a hundred subscribers from El País held Thursday, in which he broke off the origin and secrets of his last work, God’s madman at the end of the world.
The subscribers of the newspaper, many of them with the book under the arm, interrogated the writer about his work and the Vatican secrets to which he had access. “Many told me: how is it possible that an atheist as you are interested in this? The question is reverse: who would not be interested in an institution that has been completely decisive in the last 2,000 years of history?” He explained during the event, in which Joseph Oughourlian, president of the Prisa Group; Pilar Gil, CEO in a hurry medium; and the director of El País, Jan Martínez Ahrens.
God’s madman at the end of the world It is a singular work. According to Cercas, which is also a columnist of El País for three decades, the goal was not to propaganda, but that he wrote with total freedom, in his own style, a book about the Pontiff. The writer accepted with a very personal condition: he wanted to take advantage of the trip to ask the Pope an intimate question that his mother, believer and recently deceased, had always wanted to answer: Is there a real possibility of reunion among loved ones after death? “I am sure that I will meet again with my parents when I die,” he joked, answering a reader’s question.
The book is a hybrid text that combines chronic travel, biography, essay and autobiography. The title refers to Francisco himself as a disruptive figure within the Church. “He has not done the revolution,” said Cercas to the event presenter, El País journalist Sergio C. Fanjul. “Whoever thinks that a Pope can change the Church does not know the Church. But it has come to where it has been able.” The writer slowly pointed to things in the Catholic Church, an institution that the writer has known in a way that very few can. “Interpreting the Church in terms of secular policy is a mistake, and leads to misunderstandings,” he reflected. “We overvalue the political power of the Pope. He actually has no political power. And it is fine: to César what is from Caesar and God what is of God.”
Throughout the book, fences draws a deep and nuanced portrait of Pope Francis. Far from the institutional image, it shows a human pontiff, austere, uncomfortable for the conservative sectors of the Church. A Pope who rejects power, fights clericalism and defends a vision closer to its evangelical origins than to the Vatican structures. “Francisco caused huge turbulence, and resistances. He always said: risk. Play it. And that raised blisters.” In Spain, according to Cercas, particularly: “Spain has been one of the most reluctant countries to Francisco, together with the US.
“It is absurd to say that the Pope is right -wing or left,” said Cercas when asked about Francisco’s political orientation. “Thinking is about being confused. Of course, it was close to the left: he cared about migrants, for the poor … that is the gospel. But it was against abortion, divorce, euthanasia … pure reactionary thought,” explained the author of works such as Salamina soldiers, The monarch of the shadows o Anatomy of an instant.
“Francisco tried to return to the Christianity of Christ: Christ was a revolutionary, a dangerous guy. “This is obvious, but the Christianity we have known here is exactly the opposite: the one who has been next to power, and the rich,” he said. “What we have known is a perversion of Christianity. A Garrafón Christianity.”
Asked about his opinion about the new Pontiff, Leo XIV, Cercas is clear: “He will follow Francisco’s path, but with more moderation.” One of the men who has had the most access to one of the most important institutions in the West says it; A man who accompanied Francisco to the end of the world. A trip, and a book, which the writer joked, returned “exactly just as atheist. But much more anticlerical.”