Chronicle of a papacy foretold
This week’s reviews look at books on religion. The first examines the ideological roots of Latin America’s Jesuit pontiff, Pope Francis
The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope. By Austen Ivereigh. Henry Holt; 445 pages; $30. Allen & Unwin; £20.
Dec 20th 2014 | From the print edition
ON THE evening of March 13th 2013 a man previously known as Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio stepped out onto a balcony and blinked at the rain-soaked pilgrims in St Peter’s Square. They were instantly charmed by his modesty. His fellow prelates had “gone to the ends of the Earth” to find a pope, he declared, as though he were an improbably obscure choice.
The modesty was real, but his elevation was no fluke, according to a biography that delves deep into the Argentine pope’s personal history and ideological roots. Austen Ivereigh, a British Catholic, argues with passion and rigour that electing Cardinal Bergoglio pope signalled the surfacing of powerful undercurrents that had been swirling around for several decades in the world of Catholicism. Even during the monarchical reign of John Paul II, who centralised authority and quashed dissent, some countervailing trends were at work. They finally found expression in the choice of a pope from the south.
In quiet opposition to the “monarchy”, clusters of bishops from Latin America, among other regions, had been developing their own styles and sensibilities. Cardinal Bergoglio, as Mr Ivereigh calls him, was in the vanguard of a Latin American Catholicism that reflected the experience of ordinary people but somehow defied secular categories like liberal or socialist.
Mr Ivereigh lived in Argentina as a doctoral student in the 1990s, studying religion and politics. He is best when he situates the pontiff in his turbulent and seductive but brutal homeland, portraying Jorge Bergoglio, who was born to Italian migrants in 1936, as a product of the popular culture of Buenos Aires. His accent, style and tastes (in music, sport and even hot drinks) are those of a humble porteño, as the city’s residents are known.
http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21636705-weeks-reviews-look-books-religion-first-examines-ideological-roots
