Courtney McGrailThe most important story of Pope Francis is just beginning, says papal biographer Austen Ivereigh
How do you dedicate a book when it’s a biography of the Pope that you’re giving him? That question kept me awake with a glass of wine the night before my wife and I attended Francis’ morning Mass at the Casa Santa Marta on Friday. It wasn’t the only question I was wrestling with. I was presenting the Pope with both the US and the Italian editions of The Great Reformer. Should I write in both or just one? And in what language?
It’s strange how the mind fixes on these minor details. The important thing was meeting Francis, whom I had come to know deeply over the past year.
Writing The Great Reformer has wonderfully reconnected me to the past: to the time in Buenos Aires over 20 years ago researching a doctorate on the Church in Argentina, to the experience of the Spiritual Exercises as a Jesuit novice in 1999 (I later left), my first trips to Rome to report on the Vatican in 2001 (when Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio made his shy debut before the press) and later, working for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor at the conclave of 2005, when the Archbishop of Buenos Aires was considered papabile.
All these experiences left me bizarrely qualified to write Francis’ biography. That sounds self-important, but in reality it’s the opposite: it’s humbly realising that, as my Jesuit spiritual director used to try to get into my skull, “All Is Gift”.
Sometimes, all the threads get suddenly drawn together, and you’re aware that your life has put you in pole position to do something unique and significant; and that this kairos – this moment in God’s time – won’t come again. That’s how it has felt writing The Great Reformer. It’s been incredibly demanding – the biggest thing I’ve ever done, on an epic scale, against an exacting deadline – yet always with the wind and tide behind, even it when it got rough.
I first met Francis in June last year, after my Catholic Voices colleague and I had been given sought-after front-row tickets at the Wednesday audience when there is the chance to speak to the Pope as he moves along the row chatting briefly to delegates and guests. He took over two hours to reach us, because after his address — the usual mix of homespun humour and startling metaphors — he disappeared for what seemed like an eternity among the ones he calls God’s holy faithful people.
They, the anawim, the poor of God, not we, the front-row ticket holders, were his priority.
Encouragement
When Francis reached us, I took encouragement from the hand he had placed firmly on my arm. It gave me confidence: that if no one else had written that account, maybe it’s because no one was going to, and perhaps I should.
In October 2013, I left for Buenos Aires for an intense five weeks of interviews and research, scooping up copies of (almost) everything he had ever written – including three out-of-print volumes of his spirituality articles that the Jesuits allowed me to photocopy.
I retraced Bergoglio’s steps to Santa Fe, Córdoba, San Miguel, and Entre Ríos, as well as over the Andes to Santiago de Chile. There were other trips in the course of the book: to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for his first visit outside Italy, and twice to Rome, for the consistory of cardinals in February 2014 and the canonisations the following April of John XXIII and John Paul II.
In dozens of interviews with Jesuits, ex-Jesuits and others close to him from his 20 years as a bishop, archbishop and cardinal, the missing narrative began to take shape. I grew confident that the important stories about Francis had not yet been told, and that only by grasping the deep past — Argentina’s, the Church’s, the Jesuits’ — could Francis’ thinking and vision be understood.
The Great Reformer is, necessarily, not just Bergoglio’s story, but those other stories too.
Emotions
Meeting him last Friday produced a strange mix of emotions. I knew him, in many ways, more deeply than others with whom I’ve spent a lot of time. He seemed startled by the books and passed them to his secretary. I spoke to him briefly in Spanish, and he patted me on the arm, and said “Adelante” – “carry on”. Then he turned to my wife and asked her, in English, to pray for him.
He seemed to care more about us than the books, as I knew he would. That’s why I had written (in Spanish) in the title page of the US edition: “Holy Father, I know you hate the idea of books about you, preferring to deflect attention where it belongs.
“I hope this account of your life fulfils that aim.”
In the other one, the Italian edition called Tempo di Misericordia (Time of Mercy), I simply wrote (in Italian): “It’s been a privilege to tell your story. I hope it does good.”