The offer was irresistible. The dicas supplies for the communication of the Vatican proposed to Javier Cercas Accompany Pope Francis on a visit to Mongolia And then write a book about what I wanted: the trip, the pontiff, the Holy See, the faithful. Whatever you want. There was no contract or commitment. Only an invitation for which they were all opened The doors of the oldest religious power centerto have total freedom a story.
Fences, one of the most important writers in Spain, author of non -fiction books already classic such as “Anatomy of an instant”, “Salamina soldiers” and “The Importor”among others, and successful novels, such as the police saga of Terra Alta and “the laws of the border”; He thought they had gone crazy. He, Atheist, Anticlerical, “Say militant” and “Rigorous impious” was the appropriate pen to honor the task of man who had managed to shake the “status quo” of the Vatican?
One of his conditions to accept was to be able to speak alone with the Pope even if it were only a few minutes, the enough to ask him a central question in the Christian doctrine: Was it real The possibility of resurrecting in flesh and soul and enjoying an eternal life? Translated into a more personal plane, the answer would serve to confirm to her mother the reunion with her father in the beyond, although she (fervent Catholic) had no doubts about the matter.
The book was finished writing at the end of 2024 with the title “God’s madman at the end of the world” and a moving closure that is vital to ignore until you reach the last page. And the gold brooch of a journey through the central lines of Francisco’s work: a return to purest Christianity, with the poor and in need in the center and with priests more committed to the faithful than with the pomp and power of the traditional church.
Visiting in Buenos Aires to present his book at the Book Fair, the writer chatted with news about his personal trip next to the Pope and what he discovered of the man who left the way open for a deep transformation of the Church.
NEWS: Why do you think they were proposed to write this book? Although you are a very read writer in Spain, it is likely not so well known in Italy.
Javier Cercas: It is the only question I have not asked. It is very likely to look for an Atheist writer. Or to a writer who was not of his own, who had an external look. There is no doubt that it was an act of courage on his part. The Church had never opened the doors to a writer. And they gave me all the facilities, they told me that I could talk to whoever I wanted. But the book was mine. They didn’t even read it before it came out. They have been of total and absolute respect.
NEWS: How was it to immerse yourself in such vast and complex knowledge as the news of the Vatican and the Catholic religion?
Fences: We are all Catholics of Education. We all come from the great revolution of Christianity, Jerusalem and Athens, Socrates and Jesus Christ. I have had a Catholic education. And although I am an atheist or because I am an atheist, I have always been interested in the things of the Vatican. And obviously, before getting there I made a deep immersion in issues related to the Pope. I think I have read everything about Francisco. I prepared, I documented. But my fundamental work was to clean my eyes of prejudices, because on the Vatican, the Church, Christianity, we are all saturated with prejudices.
NEWS: There are issues in the book that are revealed at the end. One of them is Francisco’s answer to the essential question that the narrator is raised as the engine of the story: if possible the resurrection of the flesh.
Fences: It’s like a police novel. But in this case it is the enigma of the enigmas. When this unpublished proposal makes me, the first thing I think is about my mother. My mother was a deeply Catholic person. When my father died, the first thing my mother thought and said is that he was going to see him after death. And that is the heart of Christianity. So I thought that this book had to try what it finally deals with: how a madman without God who lost faith, will look for the madman of God, which is Francisco. And the question he asks him is that, if my mother is going to see my father after death, to listen to the Pope’s answer, which is the most authorized to answer it. So this is a police novel in the center of which is the enigma of the enigmas, the fundamental enigma of Christianity and one of the fundamentals of our civilization: the resurrection of flesh and eternal life.
NEWS: After finishing his book, knowing and treating the Pope, how would he answer the question: Who was Francisco?
Fences: If I have to define it, as a man, not as Pope, I would say he was a man in fighting himself. Very aware of his own defects and that fought to death to overcome them. It was many, as we are all crowd. It is very curious that when they name him Pope, in the Sistine Chapel, when he has not yet left the balcony he says: “I accept, but I am a sinner.” I allow myself to correct him, I think he should have said: “Yes, I accept because I am a sinner.” Because the Church is not the place of the perfect, of those who do not make mistakes, but the opposite. Jesus Christ chose Peter as Pope, who betrayed him three times. Francisco was a more conscious man than anyone from his own weaknesses, who struggled to be the best possible. From this man you can say the best that can be said of a Pope, what Hannah Arendt of John XXIII said: he was a Christian sitting in the chair of San Pedro.
NEWS: Didn’t it seem that some of his attitudes were demagogic?
Fences: Who is not demagogic? In these days it has been said a lot: “What was this Pope? A reformist, a revolutionary, a Pope who has not done anything?” It depends on what we understand by those words. If we understand a man who changed the church doctrine, the answer is no, nothing changed. But basically this papacy has to be understood as an attempt to return to the primitive church, which is exactly what the Second Vatican Council proposes. And Bergolio is the first Pope who is the son of the Vatican II. And when I say the primitive Church I want to say the Church of Christ, that of the poor. That is the Church of Christ, the other is an invention, a perversion. The demagogy is for the Pope to go dressed as a Renaissance prince. Bergoglio’s merit is having raised at least problems. Interpreting in exclusively political terms is a mistake.
NEWS: In Argentina, political interpretation has been preponderant.
Fences: The most paradoxical is that the Pope only spoke in the media about politics. But the potatoes are not politicians. The Pope has no executive capacity. Popes are neither Trump nor Macron. And this Pope, who had a political dimension that did not hide it, first of all he was a religious leader.
NEWS: But put poverty in the center and that is an essentially political gesture.
Fences: But does that mean that the Pope is left? No. This man was a radical of the Gospel. And in some aspects it was conservative. It was against abortion, of divorce. He opened the question of homosexuality, but did not just do anything. He did not go further, in my opinion, because he realized that he could not. There is a fundamental word, perhaps the most important word of all the papacy and nobody mentions it because nobody understands it: “Sinodality.” It means, essentially, to move from a vertical church to a horizontal. Back to primitive Christianity. In primitive Christianity decisions were made collectively. I also have the impression, that in Argentina all its gestures are overwhelmed. (I feel as if I had written a book about Maradona and come here to talk to the people of something they know very well). And that maybe it is an explanation of why not Argentina came. He responded to all Argentine’s topics. San Lorenzo, the mate, the tango, everything. “Argentine but modest” said the title of a Colombian newspaper and is one of the Leitmotiv of the book. He did not come to Argentina but neither did Spain or France, or Germany. He thought that the renewal of the church was on the periphery.
NEWS: Mongolia missionaries are the purest characters in the book. What impression left him?
Fences: Extraordinary. They represent the Christianity of Christ. There are less than 1500 Catholics in Mongolia. And what are these people there? To do exactly what Christ and his apostles did. They leave everything. It is total delivery and total radicality. That is the Christianity of Christ. That of the people who abandons everything, his house, his ambitions, his family, his country and goes to the end of the world, 50 degrees below zero, to lend a hand. Those are the crazy people of God.
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