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Austen Ivereigh, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope, Allen and Unwin, London 2014.
Deeply disturbing I found this book when I first read it last year and I remain disturbed.
Yet everyone I have read so far has given it glowing reviews. I am confused.
Most likely I am like the raw recruit whose mother, watching him on parade, asked: “Why is everyone but my boy out of step?”
Austen Ivereigh is known for his great services in presenting the Catholic Church to the media. Here he gives an attractive and convincing account of Pope Francis’ Argentine background, his development as a Jesuit, his sterling work as provincial giving new impetus to the Society in the 1970s.
Ivereigh’s love and admiration for Pope Francis is palpable and, as a Catholic, I find it admirable.
But I have concerns with Ivereigh’s book. There are two I would like to bring out here.
The first is that it leaves the reader with the clear – but unfair – impression that the two previous pontificates to that of Francis were less than satisfactory.
A second concern is that it paints a confusing – and possibly inaccurate – picture of the Jesuits since the mid-1970s and how Francis fits into this picture.
The “monarchical” Vatican
Along with all the positive aspects of the book, we also find passages like those on the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM) and Pope John Paul II. Regarding the self-confidence of the Latin American episcopate as expressed in the CELAM conferences of 1968 and 1979, Ivereigh states: “That self-confidence, however, had since evaporated. Partly the decline was due to the demise of liberation theology in the 1980s, but in large part it was due to the centralist papacy of John Paul II.” Continue reading
- Father Andrew Byrne is chaplain at Grandpont House, a residence for students at the University of Oxford, in England.
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