Cercas, this is how my prejudices about the Catholic Church fell

The Catholic Church told by a layman, or rather, as he called himself an anti-clerical atheist. This is the undertaking masterfully undertaken by Javier Cercas, one of the most appreciated contemporary writers," the most important civil writer in Europe", Aldo Cazzullo defined him. In 2023, Cercas was called upon by the Vatican to follow and narrate Pope Francis' trip to Mongolia, without filters, without restrictions. The fruit of that experience then became the fortunate and beautiful book 'God's Fool at the End of the World' (Guanda) in which Cercas debunks clichés about the Church and the Pope and goes to the heart of the Catholic creed, the Resurrection. We met Javier in Verona on the occasion of the review Social Poets

The whole world is full of prejudices about the Catholic Church, Christianity and the Vatican. The whole world, not just me, was prejudiced. Prejudices against, but also in favour. The whole world thinks they know everything about the Catholic Church, especially in our countries with a very strong Catholic tradition like Spain and Italy. Back then, I had so many prejudices. How many have fallen? All of them, practically all.

For example, I saw an anticlerical Church. Pope Francis was anticlerical in a very serious sense, in the sense that he thought that clericalism was the cancer of the Church, was the worst thing in the Church. Clericalism means the idea that the priest is above the faithful. This idea is catastrophic, Francis said. The priest is part of the faithful. The priest must be, he said with a very literary image, in front of the flock to show the direction, inside the flock with the faithful, because he is part of these faithful, and behind to help those who cannot continue. Never above. From clericalism come so many bad things for the Church, for example sexual abuse which is an abuse of power. But I can talk about so many other prejudices. For example the sense of humour. There is a sentence by Cioran, the Romanian philosopher, which is a kind of leitmotif in the book . He says, 'all religion is a crusade against a sense of humour'. A sense of humour is the most serious thing in the world, irony is a form of knowledge. This absence of humour, of irony, was one of the things that made me abandon, I think, the Church, Christianity. For a novelist, in fact, irony and a sense of humour are fundamental. We were saying about prejudice. What I found in the Church, in the Vatican, a Pope, Francis, who claimed a sense of humour. Perhaps the most beautiful phrase that Francis said is the one he said to a friend, a character in my book, a vaticanist with whom he was very close. One day he told him 'the closest thing to divine grace is a sense of humour'. He was thinking in Spanish. In Spanish a gracious person is a person who makes people laugh. A gracious thing is a thing that makes one laugh. This is wonderful because even if you are not a believer you feel that when you laugh you have an intelligence of things. Here are two examples of great prejudices about the Church, clericalism and the lack of a sense of humour. All the prejudices I had before I went to Mongolia are gone

In my opinion it is obvious. Pope Francis spoke of a missionary Church, an outgoing Church, he said. This missionary Church is a Church that returns to the Christianity of Christ. Once again, prejudices must be abandoned. Christ was a revolutionary, he said all men and women are equal in a world where slavery was everywhere. Even today it is very dangerous to say this, he is revolutionary. His companions were very poor people, people who had nothing. He was crucified because he was a dangerous man . The great French writer Charles Peguy said that 'the farthest thing from Christianity is the bourgeois spirit'. Today, after Vatican II, the great revolution that the Church wants to make and the great revolution that Francis wanted to make and that he has not been able to make, because it is not a revolution for one Pope, it is a revolution for 50 Popes, is to return to this Christianity of Christ, which the missionaries embody today. This does not mean that to be a Christian one must go to Mongolia, but that a true Christian must have a missionary spirit. The future of the Church is to return to the Christianity of the origins

Yes I think the Church has a language problem and I think Francis was very aware of this problem. On the one hand the language of the Church is sometimes hermetic, nobody understands some substantial things. For example the word, perhaps the most important of Francis' papacy, is a word that no one understands outside the Church, but also in the Church, synodality. There are many words that the Church uses that are hermetic, that are not understood. On the one hand there is this, on the other hand the problem is that the language of the Church is old, it is not interesting, it is not strong. The last book Francis published is called Viva la Poesia. Poetry is the word in the strongest, most vital, richest sense. The Church needs this. Obviously the Church needs first and foremost the personal example of Christians, of people who show an attractive, extraordinary, even heroic way of life, but this linguistic revolution is also necessary. The language of the Church must be understood and must be attractive