The website of
Austen Ivereigh
writer and commentator
Blog
In this interview with Pat Coyle of Irish Jesuit Communications, Austen Ivereigh talks about the content of the document and the communal discernment process that those present engaged in, in order to produce it. He also wrote about his ‘insider’ experience in an article for the US Jesuit publication America.
At the end of our first day in Frascati in late September, struck by the solemnity of the task that faced us, I messaged a friend to say that many of my fellow “experts” felt the hand of history and the weight of responsibility on our shoulders. “I hope you’re keeping a diary,” my friend pinged back.
In Laudato Si’, history’s most-read encyclical letter, Pope Francis talks of the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. Now a powerful new film lets the audience see and hear those cries.
“The title of his address in Belfast was “A New Imagination of the Possible: Pope Francis and the Gift of ‘Overflow’. A dialogue with Dr Austen Ivereigh, papal biographer and collaborator” and you can listen to it above.”
For the first time since I chose to belong to this land, I have felt as if in my own body the urgency of its thirst. The psalmist’s analogies speak loud: the parched land craving showers like a shrivelled soul pining for the mercy of God, who sends down rain on the just and unjust alike, because all need to live.