Skip to main content

The Pope and a Prostitute


I started reading the autobiography of Pope Francis a few days back as mentioned in an earlier post that was inspired by chapter 2 of the book. I’m reading the book slowly, taking my own sweet time, because I want to savour every line of this book which carries so much superhuman tenderness. The book ennobles the reader.

The fifth chapter describes a few people of his barrio that the Pope knew as a young man. Two of them are young “girls” who worked as prostitutes. “But these were high-class,” the Pope adds. “They made their appointments by telephone, arranged to be collected by automobile.” La Ciche and La Porota – that’s what they were called.

“Years went by,” the Pope writes, “and one day when I was now auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires, the telephone rang in the bishop’s palace. It was la Porota who was looking for me.”

Pope Francis was meeting her after many years. “Hey, don’t you remember me? I heard they’ve made you a bishop.” She was a river in full flow, says the Pope. “I’ve whored around everywhere, in the United States too,” she said ebulliently. She made a lot of money, married a much older man who died leaving her with a pension. Now she goes to give care to some old people who cannot look after themselves. She bathes them. “I don’t go much to Mass,” she told the bishop (later Pope Francis), “and I’ve done everything with my body, but now I want to take care of the bodies that nobody cares about.” Pope Francis describes her as “a modern-day Magdalene.”

A few years later, when he was the cardinal of Buenos Aires, la Porota called again requesting him to have a celebration with her friends and to say Mass for them. She asked if he could come early enough for her friends to confess before the Mass. He gladly consented.

La Porota made a final call. She was in hospital then. She requested him to give her “the unction for the sick.” While talking to him on phone, she was also “swearing at a doctor and shrieking at another patient.” Pope Francis writes that “she had lost none of her vigor, not even in her final hours.” She went to her grave with her characteristic cheerfulness.

What struck me is the non-judgmental description of a prostitute by a Pope of the Catholic Church. Sex is perceived as a sin – well, almost – by the Church. Prostitution is an unforgivable sin, a cardinal sin, that will merit one the eternal fires of Hell. But Pope Francis didn’t think so. He concludes the story of La Porota, the prostitute, thus: “But she went well, like the tax collectors, and prostitutes who enter the Kingdom of God before us (Mathew 21:31). And I was very fond of her. Even now. I don’t forget to pray for her on the day of her death.”

Now, you must have understood why I’m relishing this book, Hope, by the Pope.

Previous Post: From a Teacher’s Diary

 

Comments

  1. Oh such a lovely blog! Provides all the cheer in a dismal present world. Thank you for writing it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm going to write more based on this book. I'm in love with it now.

      Delete
  2. Hari OM
    Oh do share more - this book is clearly lifting your spirit - and ours by default! (I'll add it to my wishlist...) YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  3. Replies
    1. Some people are incredibly capable of such tenderness.

      Delete
  4. If only people would take that lesson: not to judge people but to be compassionate.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It requires a different sort of sensitivity altogether, I think.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Two Nuns and two questions

The nuns kept in custody  Two Catholic nuns were arrested on 25 July 2025 at Durg railway station for allegedly trafficking tribal women from Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh to Agra in UP. Today’s newspapers in Kerala have expressed their contempt of the act more vehemently than I had expected. It seems secularism has hope yet in this country. For those who are not aware of the incident, two nuns were arrested because some criminals of a depraved organisation called Bajrang Dal in Chhattisgarh chose to conclude that the nuns were committing the crime of human-trafficking. Since that charge wouldn’t stick, because the women confessed that they were going voluntarily to take up jobs with the help of the nuns in order to raise their families from miserable poverty in a country that claims to be a $5-tillion-economy, another charge was fabricated that the nuns had indulged in religious conversion. Now let us look at certain facts. Though I keep questioning the Christian churches for...

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Chhattisgarh Story

Deforestation in Chhattisgarh Kerala’s Catholic Church is teeming with rage these days because of the arrest of two nuns in Chhattisgarh on false charges. No one seems to understand the real politics behind the Modi government’s enmity towards Christian missionaries in Chhattisgarh as well as other backward states in its neighbourhood. Modi is selling the tribal areas and forestlands to the corporate sector part by part, his friend Adani being the chief benefactor. The Christian missionaries are a severe hindrance in that commerce. Let us get some facts right, at least. The Adivasi villagers allege that Gram Sabhas (local governing bodies) were forged or manipulated under pressure from Adani and the BJP government officials in order to take away their lands. In Hasdeo Aranya, minutes of the local body meetings were altered to show the villagers’ consent for land transfers. Also, the Chhattisgarh Scheduled Tribes Commission found that Panchayat secretaries were detained and coerc...