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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.
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.
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.
El sínodo, ¿cambiará la Iglesia?
Una charla sobre la sinodalidad, por Zoom, a invitación de la Diócesis de San Isidro, Argentina. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfSnAINBeFs
‘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.
Austen Ivereigh: Synodality a 'new future' for the Church
A write-up in the newspaper of the Catholic archdiocese of Melbourne, Australia, following two talks I gave to the clergy and staff of the archdiocese, at the invitation of Archbishop Peter Comensoli.
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.
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?