Pope Francis is the first Jesuit and the first Argentinean Pope. Jimmy Burns, educated at the Jesuit-run Stonyhurst College and an experienced journalist and author, particularly about Latin America, is well qualified to interpret both sides of Francis. He excels at placing Francis within Argentine society. Brought up in a staunchly Peronist lower middle-class family during the grim years of dictatorship, Francis rebelled and moved to the right. The Argentine Jesuits were divided, and Francis’s period as Provincial (regional superior) was marked by authoritarianism and conflict with left-wing priests. Complaints reached the liberal church authorities in Europe and he was sent away from the capital, a period of professional regression that forced him to reconsider many things, and that may have been his making. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he tacked leftwards, confronting both Peronist and liberal governments on corruption and the yawning inequalities bedevilling Argentina. But despite his genuine desire for the church to have an open door to all, he remained confrontational in opposing abortion and gay marriage. This is an intensely personal work by one of many liberal Catholics hoping that this Pope will bring radical change. Burns’s personal enthusiasm sustains the book through occasionally jarring discontinuities in the narrative flow. Unfortunately, this biography came too late to include June’s climate change encyclical, Laudato Si’, where Francis’s economic radicalism went further than one could have imagined when he was elected in 2013. Radical secularists are, however, set to remain disappointed: the Pope is still a Catholic.
