Long before I was hearing confessions in the Vatican, I was wearing a lab coat as a certified chemical technician and being a chemist taught me that everything is a reaction. When I talked about the environment i was looking at the Earth as a closed system. We’re all in the same test tube, my friends and the Bunsen burner is being turned up way too high.
People often forget the most glamorous part of my CV as nightclub bouncer. Yes, the Vicar of Christ used to spend his Friday nights folding his arms over his chest and telling guys in shiny shirts that they weren't getting in as they were not on the list.
In the club, you have to spot the troublemaker before they start throwing chairs. In the Vatican, the chairs are 500-year-old gilded mahogany, so the stakes are much higher.
Being a bouncer taught me about human nature. It taught me that everyone, the drunk kid in the alley and the billionaire in the velvet booth, is looking for the same thing but my final job was just a much larger version of that. Except instead of keeping people out of the club, I was trying to drag everyone in.
Living in Rome was a constant struggle, it is very hard to be the Universal Father when San Lorenzo de Almagro is playing. I try to pray for everyone, but I think the Lord understands if 51% of my spiritual energy goes toward a winning goal in the 90th minute.
If history remembers me as the guy who spent too much time talking about the poor, I’m okay with that as I want people to look back and say, Remember Francis? He was the one who told us we didn't have to look like we were at a funeral to be holy.
I want to be remembered as the Pope who reminded the world that God is not a cosmic judge with a clipboard and I opened doors, making the Catholic Church more acceptable of the LGBTQ community and blessing same-sex relationships and pointed out that Capitalism was not a good thing and climate change was an upcoming catastrophe although i did get some heat for saying that Mauro Inzoli, an Italian priest accused of child sexual abuse, could remain a priest as long as he submitted to a life of prayer and humble discretion, especially when he then went on to abuse more children and got sentenced to prison.
Once upon a time you knew where Catholics stood on their beliefs, circa 1450, but I did at least try and drag them into the modern age by not only saying that the Church needs more women involved, divorce is okay, abortion is a decision for the mother not the Church and Atheists can get into Heaven as God would forgive their unbelief.
I did have to deal with some real modern day tyrants, one of my last visitors was that strange Orange American President and his wife and daughter who decided to dress up like something from the Addams Family, when he asked me for a private sitting to confess his sins, I said that he was only there for 24 hours. The chairs were not reinforced either and they were expensive chairs as i said.
I look at the world today, and it’s a bit of a chemistry experiment gone wrong. There’s a lot of volatility. There’s a lot of acidic rhetoric but i am a firm believer that as i went from a Nightclub bouncer to the top authority on God, nobody should ever give up because today you may be emptying the office bins of some dullard who doesn't even acknowledge you or serving drinks to some obnoxious man who clicks his fingers at you and calls you Sweetheart but one day you may be in a position to decide whether they get to sit at Gods right hand or not, and that is a real ego trip.
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