Pope Francis's autobiography 2 - our hero starts work

Our serialization of the book continues from Part 1.

Me with my troublesome predecessor!

The Year of Mercy

Quite early in my reign I decided to institute a Jubilee Year of Mercy. As well as being very humble, I am also a particularly merciful man - except to people I don't like - so I initially proposed a slogan "Be merciful like the Holy Father!" However, owing to a clerical error (the cleric in question has now been mercifully laicised), it came out as "Merciful like the Father", which isn't at all the same thing!

My great friend Marko Rupnik was in Rome, and so I asked him whether he could provide one of his artistic masterpieces as a logo. "The most appropriate thing would be a two-headed skiing instructor with three eyes," he said, "just as soon as I finish some work I have to do with my 'Nuns in Bondage'." The NIB wasn't an order I had ever come across, but I was pleased to know that Marko was reaching out to these ladies.

An artistic masterpiece!

Amoris Laetitia.

One of my early triumphs was the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, which followed two Synods on the Family. In those days I hadn't yet got hold of the best way to run a synod, namely, to invite trouble-makers to chatter to each other, flatter them by calling them experts, and then ignore everything they say!

A few weeks before the report was due, I received a letter from Adolfo Nicolás, who was then head of the Jesuits, saying "Holy Father, your recent documents have been too easy for people to understand. Please insert some ambiguity, heresy and confusion into the next one, or we may have to review your membership of the Jesuits."

I think I did rather well. The result was that four turbulent cardinals sent me five Dubia. These were questions such as "Are you off your head?" and "What do you think you are playing at?" and they were very difficult to answer! So I ignored them completely, but made a note that a bit of Merciful Persecution would be needed.

Luckily, two of the cardinals died quite quickly, and one was very old. This just left my ARCH-ENEMY, Raymond Burke! I gradually took my revenge, so that now, at the time of writing, he is penniless, homeless, and under order to walk around ringing a bell and shouting "UNSAVED! UNSAVED!"

Here I have him in a painful grip known as the "Chinese Burn".

Pachamama

One of my great triumphs as pope has been to welcome other religions into the "big tent". Muslims, Hindus, Aztecs, Fire-worshippers, Pagans - even Anglicans - they're all just following slight variations on Catholicism. So when the time came to welcome the Amazonian indigenous groups, we bought a job lot of Pachamama idols and showed reverence to them.

My dear friend Austen Ivereigh, who has already written six seven books about me, including "The Pope Francis keep-fit book" and "Pope Francis's insect-based recipes", told me that Pachamama was actually just a name used by the Blessed Virgin Mary: this sounded a bit TOO Catholic for me, but I let it pass.

Then what happened? Newspaper headlines worldwide!

POPE'S IDOLS NOW IN SANTA MARIA CHURCH.

FRANCIS IDOLS THROWN IN TIBER

POPE APOLOGISES TO PACHAMAMA FOR EARLY BATH

What nonsense! As if I would ever apologise to anyone, even an Amazonian fertility goddess!

Just a perfectly ordinary day in the Vatican.

You may be wondering where the sex idols are now. Well, I passed them onto my great friends Marko and Tucho. They were delighted!

Part 3 is the last part. Honest.