An early biography paints Pope Francis as 'The Great Reformer' of the Catholic Church

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4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

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Summary

Pope Francis died Monday, leaving behind a legacy as "Pope of the People" and a change agent within the Catholic Church. Austen Ivereigh's The Great Reformer was published just a year into Pope Francis's papacy. But already, the biography argues, the pope had solidified his position as a radical reformer, both in his approach to hot-button issues and his interactions with regular people. In today's episode, we revisit a conversation between Ivereigh and NPR's Eric Westervelt. They discuss Pope Francis's upbringing in Argentina, his approach as an evangelizer, and the way his positions were at times misjudged by certain Catholics and the media.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Ampier's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. As you've probably heard, both
0:06.5	Francis died Monday. He was a bit of a radical figure, a change agent within the Catholic Church.
0:12.1	What's interesting is that wasn't a slow development. He didn't ease into his tenure as a pope.
0:18.6	On the world's stage, it seemed like he came out swinging.
0:21.8	Case in point, writer Austin Ivory came out with his biography of Pope Francis in 2014,
0:27.0	a little over a year into Francis's tenure.
0:29.5	The book is called The Great Reformer Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope.
0:33.4	Ivory spoke with Empire's Eric Westervelt back then, and the interview is an interesting
0:37.1	snapshot of how drastically Pope Francis changed the perception of the Catholic Church.
0:42.7	That's coming up.
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0:49.0	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, sources and methods.
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1:08.6	All right, before we get into this interview, I just want to set it up a bit. It's 2014, and
1:13.0	Pope Francis has been Pope for a year, and he was already talking about homosexuality and
1:18.7	abortion. But writer Austin Ivory argues that the thing that made Pope Francis different from
1:24.4	other popes wasn't his tendency to weigh in on hot on hob on topics, but how he spoke to regular people.
1:31.2	The difference between him, I think, and other popes is that he frequently stops and makes the person that he's talking to the protagonist.
1:39.7	So suddenly the focus really is on ordinary people, the people that he's talking to.
1:43.8	And I draw the contrast
	...

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