Dear Pope Francis,
After suffering from the flu, I came to realize somehow in this lifetime I entered into hell, I fell off the radar, no search party could find my eternal soul, damned as I was before birth, before my conception. I was born a Goan, an Indian whose name derives from Portuguese conquests in South Asia. My parents moved after my birth, their second son, from Bombay to London. After only three months, I have never set foot back on Indian soil. We moved to Kew Gardens, New York after three years, then to Huntington Beach, the West Coast, where I grew up in California, only two years later. Yes! My parents were both born Sagittarians, on the very same date, only one year apart. Thus, they were on the move as if I were a child in the military, getting stationed elsewhere every couple of years. My parents raised both me and my older brother to be worthy children of Roman Catholic and Franciscan background. Our Church on Magnolia Avenue was Spartan and not lavish at all. I came to cherish this memory as a fact of the tenets our Church instilled of poverty, of humility, and of charity but I, as a child, was wicked. I would never obey. Perhaps since my father found in the alcohol he drank after long nights as a flight controller a comfort not even his wife or his two boys could offer in exchange. Thus, I learned to rebel in disobedience to my parents who beat me into submission. And thus, I was conceived in Hell as the offspring of the Great Deceiver himself, a mythical creature, literary and not of biblical origin as I read.
To act out, I lit fires, like a young arsonist, and stole from my parents like any petty thief. Trouble was my first cause, unlike Archimedes, it was my fulcrum point from which to move the earth. But trouble does not come with a lever itself. My whole life, I acted the role of the black sheep within my own family. I acted as scapegoat and as the lunatic, the crazy, insane son who can do little right. But then, I found my love to read philosophy in college and to write little, silly poems. Perhaps, I discovered I am a late bloomer.
After losing my mind, as a twenty year old, I turned to Buddhism to resolve my issues with my rotten childhood. Sitting meditation helped to ground my thinking. I am now forty-eight years old, without children, but my girlfriend and I have four cats as our kids. I went back to running in long-distance races after getting laid-off at the bookstore I worked at for eleven long years in the basement under a seminary here in Hyde Park, Chicago. I started a Master's Program to learn Writing but have yet to finish because I fail to find funding to pay for school. But this is of little concern and consequence to me unless I can help rid the world of hate and power politics which plays on prejudice and even racism.
But the reason I write to you is that you are the sole person who can make amends to nations to right the wrongs of past leaders throughout the world. Yes, it may sound insane but an apology made by you for each wrong committed by the Church throughout all history may make our small planet a better place for all the sentient beings to live in harmony, or to strive to achieve healthier relations with everyone on board.
My whole life may be hell, and I may be in Hell imagining my life as a simulacrum of what was in fact real but now is illusion, this illusory world of ignorance and greed. What can I do to get a Get Out of Jail Free card from Monopoly? This hell is my prison, this life is my jail cell. Death, I fear cannot come soon enough in my life to end the suffering.
Yours affectionately,
Rui Carlos da Cunha
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