The book  “God’s Madman at the End of the World” by Javier Cercas is a suggestive work due to its narrative, the chronicle of events, and the encounters with extraordinary characters. Its writing allows us to imagine streets, events, and scenes, but above all, because the author, Javier Cercas, assumes an existential spokesperson position.

It seems to me that this is not only a book by a novelist in his prime, but also the work of a spokesperson or a messenger who lost his faith long ago. What we find in Javier Cercas is an atheist with a profound religious sense of reality, a person who reads and interprets contemporary events with breadth and depth. This work is a practical example of the need for Christians to encounter these spokespersons.

The common thread throughout the book is largely Javier Cercas’s desire, a concrete desire to meet Pope Francis to ask him a question, a question that goes beyond the usual controversial issues; he wants to ask him about eternal life to bring the answer to his mother. It is profoundly beautiful to see human desire in action in this staunch atheist, who shuttles between members of the clergy and Vaticanisms. A desire that as Christians we are called to recognize, nurture, and safeguard in our concerns as a Church. In the book, Javier Cercas serves as a spokesperson for his desire, analogizing it to the desire of humanity, which is expressed in multiple forms within culture and religion.

Javier Cercas works deeply with a rhetorical element rooted in the literature of all times, using qualifying expressions used as praise, for example, he speaks of Father Spadaro’s “owl eyes”, he describes Fazzini as a “cultured bear”, he refers to the nuns who host him as “unhinged by the immoderate consumption of faith”, he refers to Tornielli as a “leader who directs an army of journalists”, and he refers to Pope Francis as “the madman of God”.

Cercas’s work employs this expression, an expression that makes perfect sense. Nietzsche, in The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, also speaks of a madman who comes down from the mountain to announce, with all his sorrow, the death of God. But Francis is a new madman who announces the exact opposite: that God is alive, and that this liveliness nourishes all his work. For example, in the face of the authoritarianism of governments and states, the madman for God promotes dialogue and universal brotherhood; in the face of the self-referential of the clergy, he proposes resuming the synodal dynamic of the Church. A dynamic that is nourished by attentive listening to the people of God. And in the face of the lack of education to interpret the world, reality, and circumstances, he proposes using an ancient tool called discernment. This madman for God, Pope Francis, sets out to go to the discarded of the earth, to the migrants, the poor, to those who are always in excess.

I find it moving how Javier Cercas, a self-described atheist, can so clearly describe Pope Francis in this way.

This is a challenging work that confronts us with great challenges. I would like to highlight two points in particular. Learning a little more about Francis through Javier Cercas’s eyes reveals to the reader a roadmap for today’s Christian, for example, (1) promoting dialogue with figures like Cercas himself, allowing them to challenge us, and listening to their human desires. This involves creating spaces for encounter, common projects, but above all, openness to listening.

(2) And one element that cannot go unnoticed is the definition of evangelization offered by one of the book’s characters, specifically Cardinal Marengo’s definition: to evangelize is to “whisper the gospel.” It is undoubtedly a graphic image of intimacy, trust, and mutual understanding, of the extreme closeness to which we are called. That is, to abandon any proselytizing stance in order to immerse ourselves in the language, culture, and ways of life of the other. In other words, Javier Cercas’s book shows that friendship is possible and that great stories emerge from it.