Last pope

According to some, this speech was a major moment in his path to becoming Pope Francis.

In the speech, Cardinal Bergoglio compared an inwardly-turned Church to the woman that Jesus heals in the Gospel of Luke, who had been crippled by a spirit and been unable to stand up straight for eighteen years.

In the same way, he suggested, if the Church has a self-referential spirit, it interferes with its ability to carry out its mission.

Normally, these interventions are secret, but we happen to have the notes that the future Pope Francis used to give this intervention.

He gave the outline from which he spoke to Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino, the archbishop of Havana, Cuba.

Cardinal Ortega then obtained Pope Francis’s permission to share the content of the document, and it was published in the press.

It provides a valuable look at the thinking of Pope Francis on the eve of the conclave and what is likely, in essence, to be a bl