People who see Pope Francis’ efforts to reform the Catholic Church as primarily structural changes are missing the point, according to author Austen Ivereigh. Ivereigh, a Catholic journalist and writer who profiled Pope Francis in “The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope” five years ago, spoke about his new book, “Wounded Shepherd: Pope Francis and His Struggle to Convert the Catholic Church” (Henry Holt and Company, 2019) at a Nov. 22 event at St. Mary of the Lake Parish. The reform Pope Francis is undertaking is primarily spiritual, Ivereigh said, and it is based on putting Christ at the center of the church. “Those of you who know the first book will be struck by the contrast in the titles,” Ivereigh told an audience of about 100 people, including parishioners, clergy and several seminarians. The title — “Wounded Shepherd” — refers not so much to the opposition Francis has faced from some in the church as it does to his propensity to spend time with those who are “wounded” and live on the peripheries of human society. “To go where the wounds are is to go where Christ is,” Ivereigh said. When Pope Francis was elected in March of 2013, the church was in “a state of desolation,” Ivereigh said, rocked by the clerical sexual abuse scandal, questions of financial impropriety and the leak of internal Vatican documents. At the time, Francis seemed like a breath of fresh air, not unlike a populist reformer. Ivereigh said he might have been taken in a bit by that when he wrote “The Great Reformer.” “It’s not him, is it?” Ivereigh said. “It’s not that he is the real agent of change.” Rather than coming with an agenda, Pope Francis came with a discernment that the church must be opened up, to orient the church so that it faces outward, rather than inward, and to be open to the workings of the Holy Spirit. But that discernment — one that then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio expressed in a homily at the Aparecida Conference in Brazil in 2007, emphasized in the document that came out of the conference, and repeated in a talk before the conclave where he was elected in 2013 — has consequences, Ivereigh said. “If Christ really is the center the church, then there are certain implications for the church and the way the church is led,” Ivereigh said. It is those implications that have drawn resistance from some corners even of the Curia. But, he said, that resistance was to be expected. “We shouldn’t believe the church is somehow a good place,” Ivereigh said. “It is a place of spiritual combat. … The resistance is a sign that conversion is happening.” That conversion has led to structural changes, too, but those changes have been recommended by various groups of cardinals and advisers who have been tasked to bring the curial structures more in line with the mission of the church today. “Pope Francis’ role has been to change the culture, change the mindset,” Ivereigh said. “That conversion cannot be done by structural or juridical changes alone. … It is a process always of asking, what is the Holy Spirit asking of us now? How do we have to change?” Francis’ conclusion, according to his homily to the Latin American bishops at Aparecida, Brazil, and his talk to fellow cardinals in 2013, was that the greatest danger to the church came not from secularism but from the church closing in on itself. “Essentially, Aparecida was saying, ‘Don’t blame the culture for the church’s failure to evangelize,’” Ivereigh said. “If we are failing to spread the Gospel, what are we doing wrong?” Francis’ answer to that, Ivereigh said, is that the church has not trusted Christ. “The temptation that beset us or our organizations is the temptation to divide the world into goodies and baddies, and we are the good ones,” he said. “We begin to feel we are persecuted, that everyone’s out to get us. We have this permanent state of anxiety and suspicion and we see the world through a distorted lens. The temptation is to stop trusting Christ. … What we have done is reduced Christ, who is a person, to an idea.” Now the church must once again find Christ, Ivereigh said. “God hasn’t abandoned his people,” he said. “God’s with his people. Always has been, always will be. It’s the church that has abandoned the people. Now the church must go out and find God in his people.”
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