Penguin Random House To Publish The Pope’s Autobiography
“Hope: The Autobiography of Pope Francis” will be released worldwide on January 14, 2025 – by Penguin Random House imprints in many countries. The first memoir ever written by a sitting Pope will be published by Penguin Random House in territories including the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Spain, Portugal and Brazil.
“Hope” is the title of Pope Francis' autobiography, which will be published simultaneously in more than 80 countries worldwide on January 14, 2025 – by Penguin Random House publishers in many of them: Random House in the U.S. and Viking in the U.K., Kösel-Verlag in Germany, Penguin Random House in Spain and Portugal, and Companhia das Letras in Brazil. The original Italian-language edition, “Spera,” will be published by the Italian publishing group Mondadori, which announced the news on Wednesday at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where Italy is this year's guest of honor.
The autobiography will be the first memoir published by a sitting pontiff. It took Pope Francis six years to write. “The book of my life is the story of a journey of hope, a journey that I cannot separate from the journey of my family, of my people, of all God’s people,” writes Pope Francis in the announcement of the book’s upcoming publication. “In every page, in every passage, it is also the book of those who have traveled with me, of those who came before, of those who will follow. An autobiography is not our own private story, but rather the baggage we carry with us. And memory is not just what we recall, but what surrounds us. It doesn’t speak only about what has been, but about what will be. It seems like yesterday, and yet it’s tomorrow. All is born to blossom in an eternal springtime. In the end, we will say only: I don’t recall anything in which You are not there.”
‘A text of great narrative force’
Pope Francis’s memoir begins in the early years of the twentieth century with the story of his Italian roots and his ancestors’ adventure of emigration to Latin America, moving on to his childhood, adolescence, choice of vocation, adult life, covering the whole of his papacy up to the present day. According to the publisher’s announcement, “Hope. The Autobiography” contains “a wealth of revelations and unpublished stories, moving and very human, poignant and dramatic, but also capable of real humor.” It is “a text of great narrative force in which the Pope through his autobiographical account addresses candidly, courageously and prophetically some of the most important and controversial questions of our current times, as well as the crucial moments of his service as universal pastor of the Catholic Church.”
Originally, in accordance with the wishes of Pope Francis, the memoir was to be published after his passing, but the upcoming 2025 Jubilee of Hope and the needs of our time have led him to make this valuable legacy available now. Work on writing the book – with the support of Carlo Musso, former editorial director of nonfiction books at the Italian publishers Edizioni Piemme and Sperling & Kupfer and later founder of the independent publishing house Libreria Pienogiorno – began in March 2019 and will be completed in the coming weeks. “Hope. The Autobiography” is enhanced by remarkable photographs, including private and unpublished material made available by the Pope himself.
Also on January 14, 2025, audiobook editions will be published in multiple languages including in English by Penguin Random House Audio and in German by Der Audio Verlag (DAV).
