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.

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