Javier Cercas, an Atheist in the Vatican's Labyrinth

Javier Cercas's new book, 'The Madman of God at the End of the World' (Random House), is born from a perplexing paradox. An invitation to a "self-confessed atheist, anticlerical, and militant secularist" with "a devilish touch" to freely navigate the labyrinths of the Holy See. With access to the Supreme Pontiff and the liberty to write as he pleased. The result is Cercas's "most daring, risky, and provocative" book (Ibahernando, Cáceres, 1962).

Nearly 500 pages where he twists genres in a "non-fiction novel", in his personal style akin to 'Anatomy of a Moment' or 'The Impostor'. "I don't whitewash the Church, because I don't judge, I only show," warns the author of a multifaceted and controversial text.

"Have they gone mad or what?" was Cercas's initial reaction when in May 2023, at the Turin Book Fair, Lorenzo Fazzini, a representative of the Holy See, made him such a perplexing yet irresistible offer. They had thought of him to accompany Pope Francis and his entourage to Mongolia and write a book about the journey, the Church, or whatever he wished.

"It's not a commission," they explained. The Vatican opened its doors to him with total freedom to speak and ask whatever he wanted to whomever he wanted. He wanted to know if he could speak alone with the Pope, a condition he imposed to accept the unusual proposal and pose the ultimate question: is the resurrection of the flesh possible? "Compared to my mother's faith, the Pope's is doubtful, and she was certain she would see my father after death. It's what the Church and Christianity promised her, and she wanted confirmation," explains Cercas.

"I am an atheist and anticlerical, as is the Pope. I didn't ask why they thought of me, but I know no sane writer would have turned down the offer, and I didn't," he explains. He knew immediately "that the book would be about how an atheist, a madman without God, goes to the end of the world in search of the Pope, who is God's madman, to ask him if my mother would see my father after death. The Pope is the most authorized person to answer that question, which is the origin and core of the book, and I had to speak with him from madman to madman and about everything," insists Cercas. "Bergoglio's response is surprising," he anticipates without revealing it.

He has written "a hybrid book; a multifaceted and hybrid essay on what is happening in the Church today, a multifaceted biography of the Pope, and an autobiography of a Catholic who ceased to be one," he says. "A novel," he insists, straddling the chronicle of the journey to Mongolia and the exploration of the Vatican's basements, signed by a writer who, faced with a unique opportunity, "embarks on an extraordinary quest that generates more questions and concerns than answers."

"I hope I won't be excommunicated. We'll see. But the truth is, I've become more anticlerical than I already was," he jests about a book that the Pope has not yet read "and whom I will recommend not to read when I dedicate it to him."

And he acknowledges having behaved "like a devil." "When the Vatican opens the door to an atheist, it opens it to the devil," says Cercas, who cites the Rolling Stones and their 'Sympathy for the Devil' several times in his book. "I felt like the devil entering to question the Vatican and its leaders, although in reality, I am more of a privileged person than a fallen angel," he corrects himself.

In August 2023, Cercas settled in a small hotel owned by nuns near the Vatican. Before traveling to Mongolia, he delved into the labyrinth of Catholic doctrine and an institution of immense influence, whose Supreme Pontiff seems to be an "elusive" figure.

"I am a repressed madman who lets loose in books, and this is the craziest one I've written," he insists. "It stars God's madman, and you have to be a little crazy to believe what Christians believe, to have that faith in a superpower. In the book, there is a praise of madness that leads people to do things that sanity prevents," he assures.

He believes that Francis "is an anticlerical Pope" for whom "clericalism is the cancer of the Church" and that "sexual abuse is one of the evils that come from that clericalism."

"Christianity is only subversive," he points out, "and Bergoglio assures that if some read Jesus's sermons, they would call him a Trotskyist," he suggests.

He wants to make it clear that his book "does not whitewash the Church," just as his novels "have never whitewashed anything or anyone." "I say things that are not flattering to the Church or the Pope, but writers are not here to judge. We are here to understand, and that does not mean justifying or whitewashing; we understand a fascist, an impostor, or the Church." He acknowledges that he had "all the prejudices against the Church" and that he returns "without regaining faith." "Novels say yes and no at the same time. I don't trust a novel without irony, which is the first instrument of knowledge, and this one is particularly ironic," he concludes.