Unexpected request from Pope Francis: Read novels

“I would like to propose a radical change of course regarding the great attention that, in the context of the formation of candidates for the priesthood, should be paid to literature,” Pope Francis said in a letter on “the role of literature in formation,” published on August 4, 2024, and dated July 17. 

In this unexpected document, which does not have the magisterial value of an apostolic letter but has a very personal tone, Pope Francis reflects on “the value of reading novels and poems as part of one’s path to personal maturity.”

Written for priests and seminarians, Pope Francis highlights that in reality it can be useful for “the formation of all those engaged in pastoral work, indeed of all Christians."

Throughout the text he mentions several authors and figures including Argentinean short-story writer Jorge Luis Borges, T.S Eliot, C.S. Lewis, and even Paul VI and John Paul II. 

The Pope explains that during the summer, "finding a good book to read can provide an oasis that keeps us from other choices that are less wholesome" and encouraged people to put aside cellphones and social media in order to immerse themselves in literary works.

He explained that time reading can “open up new interior spaces” and rid us of “becoming trapped by a few obsessive thoughts” that can hinder our growth.

“I very much appreciate the fact that at least some seminaries have reacted to the obsession with 'screens' and with toxic, superficial, and violent fake news, by devoting time and attention to literature. They have done this by setting aside time for tranquil reading and for discussing books, new and old, that continue to have much to say to us,” the Pontiff highlighted. 

However, he regretted that “literature is often considered merely a form of entertainment, a 'minor art' that need not belong to the education of future priests and their preparation for pastoral ministry.” He believes this attitude “can lead to the serious intellectual and spiritual impoverishment of future priests, who will be deprived of that privileged access which literature grants to the very heart of human culture and, more specifically, to the heart of every individual.”

In the letter, Pope Francis remembered his experience as a literature teacher at a Jesuit school in Santa Fe from 1964 to 1965. Recalling his students’ reluctance to study French author Pierre Corneille's 17th-century play, "Le Cid," the Pope explained that "we should select our reading with an open mind, a willingness to be surprised, a certain flexibility and readiness to learn, trying to discover what we need at every point of our lives." 

“I, for my part, love the tragedians, because we can all embrace their works as our own, as expressions of our own personal drama. In weeping for the fate of their characters, we are essentially weeping for ourselves, for our own emptiness, shortcomings and loneliness,” he said. “Everyone will find books that speak to their own lives and become authentic companions for their journey.”

Drawing on the Second Vatican Council, whose constitution Gaudium et Spes affirms that “literature and art … seek to penetrate our nature” and “throw light on our suffering and joy, our needs and potentialities,” the Pope explains that "the Church, in her missionary experience, has learned how to display all her beauty, freshness and novelty in her encounter – often through literature – with the different cultures in which her faith has taken root, without hesitating to engage with and draw upon the best of what she has found in each culture." 

He explained that reading “different literary and grammatical styles” helps explore “the polyphone of divine revelation” by opening it up to new ways of thinking.

Citing an expression in John Paul II’s 1999 “Letter to artists,” he explains that literature today is “a path to helping shepherds of souls enter into a fruitful dialogue with the culture of their time.” 

“Novels unleash in us, in the space of an hour, all the possible joys and misfortunes that, in life, it would take us entire years to know even slightly, and of which the most intense would never be revealed to us because the slowness with which they occur prevents us from perceiving them,” Pope Francis explained, citing French author Marcel Proust’s novel (1871-1922) “In Search of Lost Time.”

The Pope also cited Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), whom he knew personally, who explained to his students "that at first they may understand very little of what they are reading, but in any case they are hearing 'another person’s voice.'”

“We must never forget how dangerous it is to stop listening to the voice of other people when they challenge us! We immediately fall into self-isolation; we enter into a kind of 'spiritual deafness,' which has a negative effect on our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with God, no matter how much theology or psychology we may have studied," the Pontiff continued. 

The Pope thus evokes the figure of the poet T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), who described the modern religious crisis “as that of a widespread emotional incapacity."

The Pope thus invites those that are on the way to become priests to confront themselves with literary works as a kind of "training in discernment," also drawing on the notion of "desolation" in the spiritual tradition of St. Ignatius of Loyola, as an experience to confront and not avoid. 

"We need to rediscover ways of relating to reality that are more welcoming, not merely strategic and aimed purely at results, ways that allow us to experience the infinite grandeur of being,” the Pope said. “A sense of perspective, leisure and freedom are the marks of an approach to reality that finds in literature a privileged, albeit not exclusive, form of expression.”

The Pontiff quotes various authors who compare reading literature to “digestion,” as it feeds the “stomach of the soul.” He for example quotes the Jesuit, Michel De Certeau, who spoke of a "physiology of digestive reading."

Taking the time to read allows us to enter into a relationship with characters who bring us out of our isolation. “When we read a story, thanks to the descriptive powers of the author, each of us can see before our eyes the weeping of an abandoned girl, an elderly woman pulling the covers over her sleeping grandson, the struggles of a shopkeeper trying to eke out a living,” and more, explained Pope Francis. 

He emphasized that readers can thus immerse themselves “in the concrete and interior existence of the fruit seller, the prostitute, the orphaned child, the bricklayer’s wife, the old crone who still believes she will someday find her prince charming” and can do so “with empathy,” with “tenderness and understanding,” he said. 

"Literature is not relativistic; it does not strip us of values. The symbolic representation of good and evil, of truth and falsehood, as realities that in literature take the form of individuals and collective historical events, does not dispense from moral judgement, but prevents us from blind or superficial condemnation" the Pope explains, quoting what Jesus says in the Gospel according to Matthew about removing the wooden beam in our own eye before seeing the splinter in others. 

“The wisdom born of literature instils in the reader greater perspective, a sense of limits, the ability to value experience over cognitive and critical thinking, and to embrace a poverty that brings extraordinary riches,” the Pontiff continued. 

The Pope explains that literature can help every priest or future priest "stimulate the free and humble exercise of our use of reason, a fruitful recognition of the variety of human languages, a broadening of our human sensibilities, and finally, a great spiritual openness to hearing the Voice that speaks through many voices.”

"Priests are likewise entrusted with this primordial task of 'naming,' of bestowing meaning, of becoming instruments of communion between creation and the Word made flesh and his power to shed light on every dimension of our human condition,” the Pope emphasized at the end of this detailed text. 

Read the whole text here.