Reviewed by Kevin Mark
This is the most in-depth biography we have had so far of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the man who has become Pope Francis.
The author, Austen Ivereigh, is well placed for the task. A London-based writer, journalist and commentator on religious and political affairs, he holds a PhD from Oxford University.
A former deputy editor of Catholic journal The Tablet, he writes regularly for Our Sunday Visitor, as well as the newspapers The Guardian and America. He was also director for public affairs for former Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormack Murphy-O’Connor.
Drawing on a wide range of sources and his own extensive interviews, including several undertaken in the Pope’s homeland of Argentina, Ivereigh has crafted a comprehensive account of the life, spirituality and vision of a Pope who has captured the imagination and, in many cases, the hearts – of much of the world.
Ivereigh recounts Bergoglio’s early life and his work as a significant reformer, at a remarkably young age, of the Jesuits in his home country, followed by a time of estrangement from the Jesuits. He sees Bergoglio at work in a country scarred by great political upheaval and violence, and his role in the development of a vision of a Church that practises a ’preferential options for the poor’, while avoiding the Marxist excesses of some liberation theology.
The book builds to a penultimate chapter that presents as close to an insider’s account of the conclave that elected Pope Francis as we are ever likely to have. The concluding chapter provides an account of Pope Francis up until around July 2014. Hence, this edition does not cover the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family in October 2014.
We have come to know Pope Francis and his views primarily through stories in the popular media or from views expressed by commentators – both inside and outside the Church – from their personal perspectives. At times, the sense given is that there are contradictions or even arbitrariness to the views and decisions made by Pope Francis.
In Ivereigh’s book, we are given a thoughtful and rounded view of the Pope’s vision for a Catholic Church that is truly radical, in the sense of returning to its Gospel sources and mission. It is a Church in the service of the Gospel, less centralised, and respecting the ministry of bishops in their own dioceses in regional and international synods.
At his inauguration Mass, on the Solemnity of St Joseph, Pope Francis preached on the saint as a model of leadership.
Ivereigh records that, throughout the homily, Cardinal Christopher Schonborn of Vienna was in tears and whispered to New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, “Tim, he speaks like Jesus”. Dolan replied, “Chris, I think that’s his job description”.
Courtesy Kairos Magazine, Archdiocese of Melbourne.