Le Moyne College Calendar

In attempting to create a more welcoming, attentive Church that speaks to human concerns of God’s mercy, history’s first Latin American and Jesuit pope has provoked passionate support but also bitter opposition. In his new book, British biographer Austen Ivereigh, Ph.D., digs deep behind the Francis pontificate to show how his patient reforms are rooted in a sophisticated understanding of the contemporary age — and how the Church needs to change to speak to humanity today. Dr Ivereigh, 53, is Fellow in Contemporary Church History at Campion Hall, University of Oxford, where he earned his doctorate in 1992 for a thesis on the Church in Argentina. For many years deputy editor of the weekly The Tablet, and later public affairs director for the former Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, he founded the media project Catholic Voices, which led to his book How To Defend the Faith Without Raising Your Voice.

A contributor to Crux, The Guardian, the New York Times and many other outlets, these days he writes regularly for Commonweal, America magazine and The Tablet, and is a well-known commentator on the BBC.

He tweets often as @austeni and his website is austeni.org.