Russian edition filters out perversion…
Bergoglio Blacked Out: Russia Censors LGBTQ-Friendly Passages in ‘Pope’ Francis’ Autobiography
Hope is the name of the English version of Jorge Bergoglio’s autobiography, which was compiled and edited by Carlo Musso and translated by Richard Dixon. The book was published in several languages in January of 2025, a few months before the false pope’s death.
The title is not to be understood as a noun but as an imperative, an exhortation to get busy hoping. This is clear from the original Italian edition, which is entitled Spera, not Speranza. ‘Pope Francis’, as Bergoglio called himself, can be seen advertising the work in this informal clip.
Now Hope has also been released in Russian, by Alpina Publishing Group. The title translates as Надежда (the Russian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet). The translator is Maria Kulneva (Кульнева Мария).
What makes the Russian edition significant is that within the book’s 358 total pages, some paragraphs are censored — blacked out, redacted.
On Aug. 16, 2026, the Russian-language Telegram news channel Осторожно, новости (ostorozhno_novosti), which has over 1.6 million followers, posted photos of the redacted edition, along with the following comments:
A biography of the Pope has been censored in Russia.
This year, the Russian publishing house “Alpina Publisher” released Pope Francis’s autobiography, *Hope*. As the Primus Versus store noted, parts of the text in the book were blacked out.
The censorship targeted Francis’s remarks about welcoming homosexuals* and transgender people* into the Church and their right to baptism. Belarusian theologian Natalya Vasilevich also noted that the Fiducia supplicans declaration, signed by the Pope in December 2023—which allowed priests to bless people in same-sex relationships—was censored.
*The movement is banned in the Russian Federation
(Source; bold print given. Translation using DeepL.com.)
The original Telegram post can be accessed here. The following is a close-up of the picture showing the redactions:
Incidentally, we became aware of this story through the Eponymous Flower blog. The ultimate origin of the photos appears to be this July 30 post by Primus Versus.
If we look closely at the photo showing the redactions, we see that the book is opened to pages 242 and 243. Perhaps there is additional censorship in other places of the book, but only these two pages are visible in the shot provided.
Looking at the table of contents of the Russian edition (accessible here; direct link here), we find that the pages mentioned are part of Chapter 18, which in its English edition is entitled “All Out and All In”.
What does the text of the redacted passages say?
We will quote from the official English edition:
Receptiveness, and certainly not relativism, nor any change of doctrine, is the spirit and heart of Fiducia supplicans, the declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on the blessing of couples who live in irregular situations, which I signed in December 2023. It is the people who are blessed, not the relationships. It arises from the wish not to ascribe one situation or one condition to the entire life of those who seek to be illuminated and accompanied with a blessing. Everyone in the Church is invited, including people who are divorced, including people who are homosexual, including people who are transgender. The first time that a group of transgender people came to the Vatican, they left in tears, moved because I had taken their hands, had kissed them…As if I had done something exceptional for them. But they are daughters of God! They can receive baptism on the same conditions as other believers and can perform the responsibilities of godparents on the same conditions as others, and likewise be witnesses to a marriage. No provision of canonical law forbids it.
More than sixty countries in the world treat homosexuals and transexuals as criminals, a dozen or so with the death penalty, which is sometimes even carried out. But homosexuality is not a crime, it is a human fact, and the Church and Christians cannot remain indifferent in the face of this criminal injustice, nor can they respond faintheartedly. They are not “children of a lesser god”; God the Father loves them with the same unconditional love, He loves them as they are, and He accompanies them in the same way that He does with all of us: being close by, merciful, and tender.
If the Lord says everybody, who am I to exclude anybody? “Tell me who you exclude and I’ll tell you who you are,” Don Luigi Di Liegro, founder of the Rome branch of Caritas, was fond of saying. He too was the son of a migrant who landed in South America in search of work and was turned away several times. Throughout my pastoral life, I have always welcomed and accompanied these brothers and sisters in just the same way as others. And if some people have had personal experience of “the refusal of the Church,” I would like them to know, however, that this was the refusal of one person in the Church: because the Church is a mother who calls and gathers together all of her children.
(Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Pope Francis with Carlo Musso, Hope: The Autobiography, trans. Richard Dixon [New York, NY: Random House, 2025], Kindle pp. 198-199)
This is the text we know for sure has been censored in the Russian edition. We know this based on the photo taken of pp. 242-243, and we find it confirmed by Belarusian academic Natalya Vasilevich in this post here.
There are surely many legitimate things one can criticize the Russian Federation for, but the censoring of transgenderism, homosexuality, and similar perversions is not one of them.
For over 12 years, ‘Pope’ Francis proved that he is a loose cannon and has a mouth that needs censorship. To mention just one example, there are two words he used on several occasions that express concepts so perverted that most people have never heard of them, nor would they want to. Both terms begin with ‘copro’, from the Greek kopros, which refers to what is discharged by means of a bowel movement. Long-time readers of this blog may recall the first time Francis publicly used these words, not in the context of discussing human biology but as a metaphor describing the work of certain journalists:
Censorship of spoken or printed words is anathema to the ears of modern, ‘enlightened’ man, but the concept is a very Catholic one. Of course it can be abused, and if this tool is placed in the wrong hands, it can be quite dangerous; but it is not wrong in itself.
In his landmark encyclical against Liberalism, Pope Gregory XVI (r. 1832-1846) warned against unbridled liberty to publish whatever one pleases:
Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again?
The Church has always taken action to destroy the plague of bad books. This was true even in apostolic times for we read that the apostles themselves burned a large number of books [Acts 19]. It may be enough to consult the laws of the fifth Council of the Lateran on this matter and the Constitution which Leo X published afterwards lest “that which has been discovered advantageous for the increase of the faith and the spread of useful arts be converted to the contrary use and work harm for the salvation of the faithful” [Acts of the Fifth Lateran Council, Session 10, where the constitution of Leo X is mentioned]. This also was of great concern to the fathers of Trent, who applied a remedy against this great evil by publishing that wholesome decree concerning the Index of books which contain false doctrine [Council of Trent, Session 18 and Session 25]. “We must fight valiantly,” Clement XIII says in an encyclical letter about the banning of bad books, “as much as the matter itself demands and must exterminate the deadly poison of so many books; for never will the material for error be withdrawn, unless the criminal sources of depravity perish in flames” [Christianae Reipublicae, n. 2]. Thus it is evident that this Holy See has always striven, throughout the ages, to condemn and to remove suspect and harmful books. The teaching of those who reject the censure of books as too heavy and onerous a burden causes immense harm to the Catholic people and to this See. They are even so depraved as to affirm that it is contrary to the principles of law, and they deny the Church the right to decree and to maintain it.
(Pope Gregory XVI, Encyclical Mirari Vos, nn. 15-16)
Just as a responsible father won’t allow his children simply to look at whatever literature, photos, or videos they please, neither does the Catholic Church grant such permission to the members of her flock; much less could there be a moral right before God to such false liberty. Scripture itself counsels us to guard our eyes — “Gaze not upon a maiden, lest her beauty be a stumblingblock to thee” (Ecclus [Sir] 9:5; cf. Mt 5:28) — and warns us against “making liberty a cloak for malice” (1 Pet 2:16).
Although freedom of speech/publication is in itself an erroneous idea that merits condemnation, nevertheless in a non-Catholic nation such as the United States, it is a practical necessity, since this principle alone can guarantee freedom for the Church and for individual Catholics to proclaim, print, and disseminate religious truth. (The alternative would be for the secular government to determine what Catholics are permitted to say, which would obviously be an even greater evil.)
Even over a year after his death, Jorge Bergoglio has once again proven himself to be a pioneer; for this is surely the first time in Christian history that a secular government has censored a putative Pope, not for teaching sound Catholic morals but for helping to advance sexual perversions.
You couldn’t make this up if you got paid to.
Title image source: composite with elements from Telegram (ostorozhno_novosti) and Shutterstock (soponyono)
Licenses: fair use and paid
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