Pope Francis on reading literature

Last July, Pope Francis issued a letter to the faithful “On the role of literature in formation”. In the hierarchy (so to speak) of papal documents, letters are not quite as far up the pecking order as encyclicals or apostolic exhortations, with their distinctive Latin titles, and so Francis’ letter attracted little media attention. Nevertheless, in light of Pope Francis’ recent passing, now seems like a good time to read and reflect on some of the arguments the Holy Father made in defence of an important skill that seems to be in decline – reading.

But first, what books did Francis himself enjoy reading? Biographies and, more recently, obituaries have recalled some of his favourite works. His reading was broad, drawing on the greats from many languages and cultures. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and the sprawling Brothers Karamazov made the cut. On a number of occasions during his pontificate, Francis spoke highly of Lord of the World, a dystopian and eerily prophetic sci-fi novel by Robert Hugh Benson, an English Anglican vicar who was eventually received into the Catholic Church. One of his favourite films, Babette’s Feast (1987), is based on a short story of the same name by Isak Dinesen, the pseudonym of Danish writer Karen Blixen. The tale of a poor Parisian cook who found herself at the door of two dour and pious sisters in rural Denmark, poignant Christian intertexts glimmer throughout the narrative.

Pope Francis also loved Alessandro Manzoni’s classic The Betrothed, published in 1827. First introduced to him by his grandmother, he had read it at least three times during his life. The act of re-reading is itself an increasingly rare skill. To return to a book again, and then again – especially a tome as weighty as Manzoni’s – points to a capacity and willingness to discern and appreciate the depths and textures a literary work can produce. A hasty first reading will leave many of a literary work’s intricacies undiscovered, like buried treasure beneath our feet (or on our bookshelf). The act of re-reading a text also points to an impressive capacity for patience and discipline on the part of the reader, who must set aside their precious time in order to re-walk the same path with a book in the expectation of uncovering new insights from it.

In the introduction to his letter, Pope Francis explains that he originally intended this epistle for those in priestly formation. However, he continues, he ultimately found its contents applicable to a much broader audience – “this subject applies to the formation of all those engaged in pastoral work, indeed of all Christians”. The letter addresses “the value of reading novels and poems as part of one’s path to personal maturity”. The letter aims to challenge the assumption that literature is “merely a form of entertainment” and “considered non-essential”. In this regard, the Holy Father commends some seminaries for their decision to set aside “time for tranquil reading and for discussing books, new and old, that continue to have much to say to us”. This finds echoes in popular school-based reading programmes, such as DEAR, where children must Drop Everything And Read for a timetabled period each day.

Pope Francis describes the reading process as a sort of mental or imaginative “rewriting” undertaken by each reader. They effectively “rewrite a text” when they begin to seriously engage with and process an author’s words, and turn those words into ideas. There is a sort of fecundity to reading. An engaged reader ends up bringing their own baggage to a text: “their memory, their dreams and their personal history”, so that “what emerges is a text quite different from the one the author intended to write”. There are resonances of Roland Barthes’ “death of the author” in these lines, in which an author’s identity and intentions are, to some extent, dissociated from their work. Even as an author “dies”, their book “lives”, taking on a life of its own for each reader. For Francis, “a literary work is thus a living and ever-fruitful text”.

“Dialogue”, “discernment”, and “encounter” are three words that are distinctive to Pope Francis’ pontificate, echoing throughout many of his remarks and writings, including this letter. Literature allows readers “to enter into dialogue with the culture of their time”. It offers us a window into “the lives and experiences of other people”. Stories are a means of dialogue and encounter. Literature helps us to appreciate “the reality of individuals and situations as a mystery charged with a surplus of meaning that can only be partially understood through categories”. Books, novels, and poetry sensitise us to how fascinatingly complex humans can be. Francis criticises contemporary trends towards dull, utilitarian prose which can bring a flatness and pallor life’s vivid richness, with associated implications for Christian discernment and encounter. “There is always the risk that an excessive concern for efficiency will dull discernment, weaken sensitivity and ignore complexity”, he writes.

Tragedy has long offered humans a particularly rich source of encounter. Francis points to his love for the tragedians because we can embrace their works as “expressions of our own personal drama”. Indeed thinking of Shakespeare alone, besides the great tragedians of antiquity, there is an unmistakable universality to his great tragic heroes that has endowed them with a centuries-old, enduring appeal – Lear’s pride; his fears and missteps as old age closes in around him; Hamlet’s youthful self-absorption; his feelings of destitution and isolation in the wake of his father’s sudden death and his mother’s hasty remarriage; Macbeth’s perplexing mix of ambition and naivete. Encounter with the humanity and folly of these remarkable characters brings new breadth and nuance to our perspectives.

Francis’s papacy was marked by seeking and showing mercy towards others, and an appeal to bring the faith to the margins. His letter works towards this end too, with a characteristically Franciscan call to action. He challenges his readers: “How can we speak to the hearts of men and women if we ignore, set aside, or fail to appreciate the ‘stories’ by which they sought to express and lay bare the drama of their lived experiences in novels and poems?” He repeats this call later in the letter, asking “can we ever really go out of ourselves if the sufferings and joys of others do not burn in our hearts?” Engagement with literature should not be a self-centred activity, but should nurture our sense of understanding and compassion. Even a pursuit as inward-focused as reading should push us “out of ourselves”.

For Francis, stories shape people. And when people are seeking purpose in their own lives, they are seeking a story or narrative for it. For Christians, this story begins and ends with one Word. At times in the letter, Francis reflects on this intersection of Word and flesh. Our reading should not be an entirely esoteric or disembodied practice. It should work towards practical and human ends too. “Familiarity with literature”, Francis writes, can make us “more sensitive to the full humanity of the Lord Jesus”. In keeping with the down-to-earth and practical spirit of his papacy, Francis contends that “we must always take care never to lose sight of the ‘flesh’ of Jesus Christ: that flesh made of passions, emotions and feelings, words that challenge and console”. Literature, in this regard, is ultimately an encounter not only with the stories and lives of others, but with Christ himself: “For Christians, the Word is God, and all our human words bear traces of an intrinsic longing for God”.

There is much of value to ruminate on in “On the role of literature in formation”, including topics not touched on here, such as the rich texts of the Bible itself or the problem of boredom and tedium in reading. Instead we turn to the one other letter Pope Francis wrote on a literary theme during his papacy. Issued in March 2021, Candor lucis aeternae commemorated the seven-hundredth anniversary of the death of Dante Aligheiri, Italy’s greatest poet, easily one of the greatest of the Middle Ages, and arguably one of the greatest of all time. In it, the Holy Father reflected on “the poignant melancholy of Dante the pilgrim and exile”. A public official, Dante found himself embroiled in political conflict and ultimately cast out of his beloved Florence, dying in exile in Ravenna.

Reading and reflecting on the letter in the aftermath of Pope Francis’ passing, it is hard not to be struck by fleeting, albeit ephemeral affinities between the two men. Like Dante’s perpetual exile from Florence, Francis never once returned to Argentina during his papacy, a country convulsed by its own political factions and infighting. Like Dante, Francis found himself a sort of “pilgrim and exile” thousands of miles from home, the margins of Buenos Aires, as the burdens of the papacy were placed upon his shoulders. Through Pope Francis’ writings and teachings we can remember with gratitude his earthy clarity and practical wisdom, that through encounter, dialogue, and mercy we might discern in our own lives and in those around us l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle, “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars” (Paradiso, XXXIII, 145).