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Making world history
In this interview with Pat Coyle of Irish Jesuit Communications, Austen Ivereigh talks about the content of the document and the communal discernment process that those present engaged in, in order to produce it. He also wrote about his ‘insider’ experience in an article for the US Jesuit publication America.
I helped write the first global synod document. Here’s what we heard from Catholics around the world.
At the end of our first day in Frascati in late September, struck by the solemnity of the task that faced us, I messaged a friend to say that many of my fellow “experts” felt the hand of history and the weight of responsibility on our shoulders. “I hope you’re keeping a diary,” my friend pinged back.
A letter to break our hearts
In Laudato Si’, history’s most-read encyclical letter, Pope Francis talks of the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. Now a powerful new film lets the audience see and hear those cries.
Pope Francis and the gift of ‘overflow’
“The title of his address in Belfast was “A New Imagination of the Possible: Pope Francis and the Gift of ‘Overflow’. A dialogue with Dr Austen Ivereigh, papal biographer and collaborator” and you can listen to it above.”
Synthesising the synodal process through listening to the laity and the Holy Spirit
A new biography, which portrays Benedict XVI as a reluctant pope, set on rescuing the Church from a hostile modern age, fails to capture the complex, original quality of his thinking.
Pope Francis and the liturgy – a plea to put aside polemics and ego
Pope Francis’ recent letter to all the faithful on the liturgy is a plea to put aside polemics and ego, and to marvel at the liturgy’s truth and beauty.
Pope Francis' reforms make the heresy-hunting Vatican of John Paul II barely recognizable
'Praedicate Evangelium' is nothing less than a conversion of how power is exercised in the church
Benedict XVI, Defender of the Faith
My cover article in The Tablet of 15 January 2022, in which I argue that a new biography of Benedict XVI by his longtime German journalist interpreter fails to capture the complexity and nuance of Joseph Ratzinger, and is heavily dependent on the “court” of the pope emeritus, above all his minder, Archbishop Georg Gänswein.
A Steaming Synod
My Wild Faith column in The Tablet of 5 January, on what good compost can teach us about synodality (and vice-versa).
Defender of the faith
A new biography, which portrays Benedict XVI as a reluctant pope, set on rescuing the Church from a hostile modern age, fails to capture the complex, original quality of his thinking.
Latin America’s first continent-wide church assembly: Here’s what happened.
At the end of November I spent a week in Mexico at the invitation of CELAM, the umbrella body of Latin-American bishops’ conferences, to attend the region’s first “Ecclesial Assembly,” in which a 1,000-strong mix of bishops, clergy, religious and lay people gathered to discuss the pastoral priorities of the Church in the post-Covid era.
I was interviewed about why I had come (in Spanish) shortly after arriving, gave a 3-minute reflection to the assembly (here, at 37’25, also in Spanish), and, after returning took part in a podcast for America magazine, which later published the following article with my reflections (including some criticisms) of a remarkable and important event.
‘The Hour of the People: Pope Francis and the post-Covid moment’
A lecture I was invited to give by Zoom to the Archdiocese of Boston’s Social Justice Convocation on November 13, 2021. I was given a warm welcome by Cardinal Sean O’Malley and Fr Bryan Hehir gave a thoughtful response. At the heart of the talk is what I describe as a shift in Francis’s reading of the signs of the times following the outbreak of the pandemic. From a sombre view of the direction of history prior to March 2020, the Pope began to discern a new hope in what he saw as an awakening “from below” of fraternity and solidarity in the world. I see Let Us Dream, his address to the popular movements and his calling of the global synod as signs of what I call “the hour of the people”, and spell out some of the implications for the Church’s pastoral ministry.
Pope Francis tells a new story
In this cover article for The Tablet (6 November 2021) I describe how Pope Francis’s groundbreaking 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ allowed humanity to re-imagine their place in creation, beyond anthropocentrism yet with a vital mission to play as co-creators with God, endowed with a special responsibility to care for the earth. I speculate that Erich Pryzwara SJ and his formidable 1932 work Analogia Entis may have helped Francis perform this shift.
Speak Boldly, Listen Carefully: Inside the synod
In Rome for the opening of the global "synod on synodality" on October 9-10, I was fortunate to be in the synod hall for the addresses — including Pope Francis’s — and attended some of the commissions’ meetings. In this substantial article for Commonweal, I take a wide-angled view of the process as a bid by Pope Francis to re-infuse the diocesan Church with "synodality" as best preserved in the religious orders. READ HERE.
Pope Francis was right to call out the attacks from EWTN (and to use the ‘d’ word)
While in Slovakia recently, Francis told the Jesuits that “a large Catholic television channel” had no hesitation in “continually speaking ill of the pope”, and that its attacks were the “work of the devil”. An editor of America magazine, J.D. Long-García, took issue with Francis, claiming his was an attempt to silence criticism. My response, also at America, argues it was no such thing, but alerting the People of God to the action of the diabolos — as popes should.
The Spirit in the Assembly
In this article for Commonweal, I write about the most far-reaching event in the Catholic Church in my lifetime, which officially gets its start next month (October 2021). It is Pope Francis’s boldest move yet, potentially the most transformative moment in Catholicism since the Second Vatican Council. The two-year “synod on synodality,” launched in Rome on October 9 and in dioceses worldwide a week later, is set to mark Christianity forever. So why do so few appear to have noticed?
That Mass that Divides
With testimony from parishioners such as, in an article for this week’s I record how the parish community of Ledbury has been shattered by its priest giving the Old Rite pride of place and clearing Sunday for the Latin Mass Society.
The key to understanding Pope Francis’ restrictions on the Latin Mass? His belief in inculturation.
In a video message sent on Aug. 13 to the religious orders of Latin America, Pope Francis touched on a theme dear to his heart: the inseparability of evangelization and inculturation.
‘Coherence’ & Coercion: Making room for political discernment
“Of all the instruments to use to coerce a politician…the Eucharist!” My friend, a senior Vatican official from Latin America, blurted out his shock as we discussed the majority vote at the U.S. bishops’ meeting in June in favor of a document on “eucharistic coherence.”
Boris Johnson had every right to be married in the Catholic Church.
While the optics of Boris Johnson's marriage in a Catholic church this weekend suggest a double standard, in fact the church seems to be treating him the same it would any divorced Catholic seeking to remarry.