When I was a freshman at a Jesuit high school in Los Angeles, my English composition teacher drummed into us the importance of unity, emphasis and coherence. Pope Francis’ new memoir, Hope: The Autobiography (Penguin/Viking), ghost-written by Carlo Musso, strikes me as a luminous example of these skills.

What keeps jumping out is the extraordinary integration of human and spiritual values, beauty, intelligence and art revealed throughout Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s long and endearing life. Finely written and superbly translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon, the book exudes the verve we have come to expect even in the 88-year-old pope. In 25 relatively brief chapters averaging about 15 pages each, the pope presents an engaging synthesis of deep and persistent currents of feeling, thought and colorful anecdotes.

Francis focuses on everyday human experience to give us the deep sources and the tangible outcomes of his own most deeply held values. He describes and richly illustrates those lived experiences with apt metaphors, literary allusions and artistic references, especially to movies. Numerous, well selected photos with informative captions add significance and sizzle to the pope’s flowing narrative.

Drama and action lurk everywhere in what amounts to a rather thrilling, if at times dangerous, life. For example, during the General’s Dirty War in Argentina there was the threat of torture or being “disappeared” in the murky waters of the Rio de la Plata. Maneuvering his way later in the Vatican’s political labyrinths as cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires and subsequently as bishop of Rome is arguably just as risky and daunting as anything Bergoglio had to face in Argentina.

The spirit that animates Bergoglio’s life fits well into Jesuit spiritual writer Walter Burghardt’s intriguing definition of Christian spirituality as “a sustained, loving look at the real.” Pope Francis  takes a prayerful, loving and playful gaze at his lifetime, including his family and many historical events.

He doesn’t flinch as he offers his memories with the horror and beauty that accompany them. There is nothing naïve or romantic about this pope’s awareness and assessment of good and evil. Some might criticize that he does not give examples of his errors. But he frequently mentions that he made plenty of them, especially when he was younger and had assumed heavy responsibilities as leader of the Jesuit order in Argentina.

Persistent themes emerge and reemerge throughout the text. One is the powerful influence of popular culture, religion and spirituality on his worldview — owed in great measure to his Italian working-class stock and to his exposure to the poor and marginal classes of Latin America. Another recurrent theme is his lifelong passion for politics understood through his concern for public policy and its effects on the concrete conditions that deprive the most vulnerable of life, liberty and human dignity.

He confirms what his biographers have already noted: that he first became aware of his love for politics — what Pope Benedict XVI called “social charity” — as a young man through friendship with his chemical laboratory mentor, Esther Ballestrino de Careaga, a kind and courageous refugee from Paraguay, and a Marxist. While he did not agree with many of her political views, he deeply admired her passion for social justice and later heard of her torture and death at the hands of the military dictatorship.

Much of what we read in Francis’ autobiography has already been well documented by writers such as Austen Ivereigh, but what we know is now viewed from the lens of Bergoglio’s Ignatian spirituality and Christian humanism. Since two premises of the Ignatian way are that God can be found in all things and that God’s love is incarnate, the pope imbues his lived experiences, good and bad, with large doses of compassion, mercy and love.

With the publication of this autobiography, Pope Francis cements his monumental project of demystifying the papacy. Without dismissing or diminishing the Petrine ministry, this reform pope has sought in small and sometimes larger ways to demythologize that ministry in ways that contribute to the Catholic church’s synodal reform.

Pope Francis informs us tellingly that he loves this quotation attributed to Gustav Mahler: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes; it is the preservation of fire.”