Pope Francis Rejects Hero-Worship And Says He Is A Normal Person

He has graced the cover of Rolling Stone, been depicted as a street-art superhero and is greeted by crowds of adoring fans wherever he goes. But Pope Francis has had enough of the hero-worship that has accompanied his year-long papacy, describing it as offensive and insisting he is just "a normal person".

In an interview published in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera almost 12 months after he was elected by cardinals in the Sistine chapel, Francis was quoted as saying he objected to the image of him that has been widely propagated.

The Argentinian pontiff, 77, has dramatically altered the style of the papacy, making a series of symbolic choices that have solidified his persona as a plain-living, down-to-earth and genial head of the Catholic church.




But, as the Vatican prepared to mark his one-year anniversary with a DVD of behind-the-scenes footage and a new magazine launched in Italy dedicated entirely to him, Francis rejected the excesses of so-called Francescomania.

"Sigmund Freud used to say, if I'm not mistaken, that in every idealisation there is an attack," he said.

"Depicting the pope as a kind of superman, a kind of star, seems to me offensive. The pope is a man who laughs, cries, sleeps calmly and has friends like everyone else. A normal person."

Giving interviews to the mainstream media is one of the ways in which Francis has struck a new tone in the Vatican since his election last March.

But the encounters have not always gone smoothly: the Vatican chose to take down an interview with him that appeared in La Repubblica after doubt sprang up over certain passages in the published text and the journalist admitted he had neither recorded the conversation nor taken notes during it.

Francis said that, while he liked "to be among the people", he did not appreciate the assumptions he said were made about his stance on core issues.

"I do not like the ideological interpretations, this kind of Pope Francis mythology," he said. "When, for example, it is said that I leave the Vatican at night to feed the homeless in Via Ottaviano [a street just outside Vatican City]. Such a thing has never occurred to me."

To mark the anniversary of the church's first non-European pope for almost 1,300 years, the Vatican is not only producing a series of commemorative coins and stamps but also preparing to release a video from the night Francis was chosen as pope.

The church, however, is not the only organisation regarding 13 March as a date to watch. Mondadori, the publishing company controlled by the family of the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, has brought out a new weekly magazine devoted to the former cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
Entitled Il Mio Papa, or My Pope, the fanzine contains an array of Francis trivia and comment, including tips on the best places to stand in St Peter's Square to catch his Sunday blessing, photographs of the guesthouse where he lives, and a centrefold picture of the pontiff smiling in his white cassock.
In the interview with Corriere, Francis also took the opportunity to defend the church's record on the clerical sex-abuse scandal, an issue on which he has rarely spoken out.

While acknowledging the crimes committed as "terrible" occurrences, which left "very deep wounds", he praised the efforts of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, in responding to the crisis.

"On this the church has done a great deal," he said. "Perhaps more than anyone else. The statistics concerning the phenomenon of violence against children are shocking but they also show clearly that the great majority of abuse occurs within families and among acquaintances. The Catholic church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No one else has done more. And yet the church is the only one to be attacked."