Blog
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.”
Our bitter harvest
For the first time since I chose to belong to this land, I have felt as if in my own body the urgency of its thirst. The psalmist’s analogies speak loud: the parched land craving showers like a shrivelled soul pining for the mercy of God, who sends down rain on the just and unjust alike, because all need to live.
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.
The chorus of life
Farewell Izzy, Buffy and the girls. Thanks for the blue and brown eggs these past two years, not least those you left us among the feathers scattered in the coop like linen in a tomb.
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
The joy of the shepherd
The new Christopher Lamb – gambolling in a field on a farm near Hereford. The newly born “Christopher Lamb” makes a canine friend in his field near Hereford.
‘Field hospital’: a podcast interview
A podcast interview with Where Peter Is founder editor, Mike Lewis, and Jeannie Gaffigan.
Bringing Pope Francis to Belfast
About recording a message with Pope Francis for the remarkable 4 Corners Festival in Belfast (30 January to 6 February): the talk I gave at St Anne’s Cathedral opening the festival, and a lecture I gave at St Brigid’s parish.
The limits of dialogue: why Francis has been tough on traditionalists
Some have asked: why is Pope Francis committed to dialogue but not with traditionalists? A brilliant 1991 essay by Jorge Mario Bergoglio distinguishing between sin and corruption suggests some answers.
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.
7 sources of Pope Francis’s dream of a synodal Church
A lecture I gave on 8 December to the Irish Institute for Catholic Studies at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, in which I identify 7 “sources” of Pope Francis’s dream of a synodal Church: Acts of the Apostles, the Church’s first millennium, the Spiritual Exx of St Ignatius, Vatican II, Celam/Aparecida, the sex abuse crisis and Covid-19.