ROME — Pope Francis turned 88 on Tuesday and marked the occasion with revelations that he almost didn’t make it. According to excerpts of his upcoming autobiography, suicide bombers had planned to attack him during his 2021 visit to Iraq, but were killed before striking.
The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on Tuesday published excerpts from “Hope: The Autobiography,” written with Italian Carlo Musso, which will be released in more than 80 countries next month. The New York Times published more excerpts on Tuesday.
In the Italian excerpts, Francis recalled his historic 2021 march to Iraq, the first through a Pope. COVID-19 continued to rage and security considerations were high, especially in Mosul. The devastated northern city was the headquarters of Islamic State militants, whose terrible rule had largely emptied the region of its Christian communities.
According to the book, British intelligence informed Iraqi police as soon as Francis arrived in Baghdad that a woman carrying explosives was headed to Mosul and planned to blow herself up during the papal visit. “And a truck was heading there at full speed with the same intention,” Francisco says in the book.
The trip went as planned, albeit under tight security, and became one of Francis’s most moving foreign trips: standing in the rubble of a Mosul church, Francis invited Christians to Iraq to forgive the injustices committed against them by Muslim extremists and to rebuild.
In the book, Francis says he later asked his Vatican security team what happened to the suicide bombers.
“The commander replied laconically: ‘They are no longer there,'” Francis writes. “The Iraqi police had intercepted them and blew them up. I realized: even this is the poisoned fruit of war. “
The book, which is scheduled to be published after Francis’ death, appears to be the beginning of the Vatican’s wonderful Holy Year, which Francis will officially inaugurate on Christmas Eve.
According to Italian publisher Mondadori, “Hope” is the first autobiography ever published by a pope. Francis, however, has published other first-person, memoir-style books or book-length interviews with biographers and journalists, including “Life: My Story Through History,” published earlier this year.
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