21-04-2025
Liberal ‘new broom' showed his true passion was for peace
In Hope, the recent book billed as an autobiography which was in fact a series of interviews with the Italian publisher Carlo Musso, Pope Francis came over as unafraid of a fight.
'Two Slovenes make a choir,' he quipped — and he was a highly humorous man — 'two Croatians make a parliament and two Serbs make an army.' But, added the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, 'in Argentina, each pair of us make a civil war.'
Conflict was natural to him. Half of his family were indigenous Argentinian, the other half first-generation poor Italians. His recollections were of large family dinners, with thirty people sitting down together, feasts often ending in fisticuffs. His parents were always rowing.
• Pope Francis obituary
When he was
