Radio interview: Austin Ivereigh

Austin Ivereigh is a great friend of Pope Francis – having written his two Biographies. 
He has also just written a new book entitle First Belong to God – On Retreat with Pope Francis.

He was interviewed by Monica Morley on Midwest Radio’s Faith Alive programme on 3 March 2024.

From his Wikipedia page: In 2014, Ivereigh published The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope, a biography of Pope Francis. Hugh O’Shaughnessy wrote in The Observer, “Dr Ivereigh’s exhaustive book on the first pope from the New World follows Paul Vallely’s excellent Pope Francis: Untying the Knots, in making better known the life and thoughts of this son of Italian immigrants to Buenos Aires.”

In The Washington Post, Elizabeth Tenety wrote, “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.’ During his time as provincial superior of the Society of Jesus in Argentina, he attempted to reorient a politically charged church culture toward the spirituality of everyday holiness.”

Ivereigh followed up with a second biography in 2019: Wounded Shepherd: Pope Francis and His Struggle to Convert the Catholic Church.

Link to interview:

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