German Cardinal Walter Kasper, the man dubbed ‘the pope’s theologian,’ had a message that some of his more prominent critics might have needed to hear. “The pope is not a liberal,” Kasper declared in a November address at the Catholic University of America in Washington. “He is a radical.” The cardinal spoke in the wake of October’s Synod of bishops on marriage and the family, which revealed serious disagreement among top church leaders on issues such as homosexuality and divorce.
Pope Francis does not defer to convention and does not shy away from confronting even the most entrenched religious ideologies. Nor does he bow to political expectations. He seems fearless in the face of church opposition or partisan pressure — indeed, one souvenir T-shirt in many gift shops in Rome shows him in a superhero cape, soaring to the rescue. Francis is a radical also in the spiritual sense: He is not afraid to question religious culture when it gets in the way of living the Gospel. He recognizes that there is something profoundly countercultural and holy in living the selflessness of Christian life.
In this new era for the church, the pope is able to make ancient church teaching sound like headline news and is himself a near-constant trending topic on social media. It wasn’t long ago that the church was dismissed as passe and unable to change. But now, 2,000 years after the death of Christ, the Catholic Church seems resurgent. Who is this larger-than-life man leading the charge? What are Francis’ origins, how did he come to his beliefs and where is he taking his church? “The Great Reformer,” a new biography of the man born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, offers an illuminating guide.
Catholic journalist and church insider Austen Ivereigh has carefully parsed church documents and the pope’s early speeches and writings and has spoken to dozens of Francis’ friends, associates and parishioners to take readers beyond the front page. Amid a wave of new books about this unpredictable pope, Ivereigh helps fill in the biography of a man who has long been reluctant to embrace the spotlight. This pope, who delivers stellar morning sermons and seems to question long-established doctrine in off-the-cuff remarks, seems less surprising — but no less remarkable — when viewed through Ivereigh’s lens.
The author immerses us in daily life on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, where Francis grew up and lived for many years. He emphasizes the influence of Bergoglio’s grandmother Rosa, on whose knee the boy learned the faith. Less puritanical than his parents, who would not allow divorced people into their home, Rosa introduced the future pope to a version of Catholicism that affirms holiness where one finds it, even outside traditional religious boundaries.
As a young Jesuit teacher in 1960, Bergoglio sent a letter to his 11-year-old sister, Maria Elena, detailing the cold and hunger his impoverished elementary school students faced and asking her to pray the rosary for them. “Don’t forget that on that plan a child’s happiness depends,” he wrote. Connecting social justice to spirituality, he was sensitive to the cries of the poor early in life. His recognition of the “virtuousness of ordinary people” drew him closer to Christ.
At 21, Bergoglio nearly died from a lung disease, and he credits a wise and attentive nurse with saving his life, an experience that Ivereigh suggests parallels the current condition of the Catholic Church. The “daringly astute” nurse caring for Bergoglio tripled the dosage of his medication. “She knew what to do because she was with ill people all day. … [She] lived on the frontier.” But, Ivereigh writes, the doctor overseeing Bergoglio’s care “lived in a laboratory.” It’s that juxtaposition of the laboratory of pure ideas against the real needs of the faithful that Ivereigh sees as shaping Francis’ view of the church today.
In pushing the church forward, Francis today insists that “God is not afraid of new things” and that the complexities of human life are not necessarily black and white. “Jorge Bergoglio’s radicalism comes from his willingness to go to the essentials, to pare back to the Gospel,” Ivereigh writes. Francis found his way to the essentials while putting in place the post-Vatican II spiritual renewal in his Jesuit order by focusing on “poverty, holiness, missionary focus, obedience to the pope and unity.”
To those who worry that Francis is damaging the church, Ivereigh replies that, on the contrary, he is restoring it. Francis may be the one man who can effect major change in the church — what it emphasizes, how it’s received by Catholics, and even its media coverage — while leaving its core teachings alone. Francis supposes, as do Christians worldwide, that by faithfully living the radical messages of Jesus, you really can change the world.
Ivereigh chronicles an unlikely reformation unfolding before our eyes that may be the blueprint for the life of that world to come.
NONFICTION: BIOGRAPHY
The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope
by Austen Ivereigh (Henry Holt)
