The Autobiography

THE GLOBAL BESTSELLER

The groundbreaking, intimate and inspiring memoir from Pope Francis.

Books of the Year 2025: The Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Financial Times, New Statesman

'Remarkable' Guardian

'Elegant and joyful' Financial Times

Pope Francis originally intended this exceptional memoir to appear only after his death, but the needs of our times and the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope moved him to make this precious legacy available sooner. Now, the book stands as his testament; the spiritual, faith-filled, as well as moral, social, and civic legacy that he envisioned and left for the benefit of all the men and women of the world.

HOPE is the first autobiography in history ever to be published by a Pope. Written over six years, this complete autobiography starts in the early years of the twentieth century, with Pope Francis’s Italian roots and his ancestors’ courageous migration to Latin America, continuing through his childhood, the enthusiasms and preoccupations of his youth, his vocation, adult life, and the whole of his papacy up to the present day.

In recounting his memories with intimate narrative force (not forgetting his own personal passions), Pope Francis deals unsparingly with some of the crucial moments of his papacy and writes candidly, fearlessly and prophetically about some of the most important and controversial questions of our present times: war and peace (including the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East), migration, environmental crisis, social policy, the position of women, sexuality, technological developments, the future of the Church and of religion in general.

HOPE includes a wealth of revelations, anecdotes and illuminating thoughts. It is a thrilling and very human memoir, moving and sometimes funny, which represents the ‘story of a life’ and, at the same time, a touching moral and spiritual testament that will fascinate readers throughout the world and will be Pope Francis’s legacy of hope for future generations.