Recently a Philadelphia newspaper columnist took Pope Francis to task for his lack of patience. She contrasted him with the saintly John Paul II, who never displayed a lack of patience nor expressed any anger. Clearly the columnist really didn’t know either man.

Austen Ivereigh follows his critically acclaimed biography of Francis with A Wounded Shepherd. The book is essential reading for anyone who really wants to understand this very popular pope along with those who fear and resist his call to bring the church to conversion.

Following a fairly short biographical chapter that highlights Jorge Bergoglio’s conversion, the author explores the major challenges and achievements of his papacy. In each chapter Ivereigh weaves together a tapestry connecting more current events with earlier experiences that came to shape Francis’s perspectives. As a young adult Jorge experienced the grace of conversion – accepting the gift of great mercy – which leads one to mission, a sharing of the gift.

Ivereigh details each of the challenges that Francis has faced as an occasion for conversion. While not always completely successful, Cardinal Burke and Archbishop Vignano continue to resist, Francis continually employs the dynamics of The Spiritual Exercises. The pope repeatedly calls for discernment and then action in line with the movement of God’s Spirit. For Francis that calls for a church that is close to people and a church that takes concrete action to serve people.

In addition to his solid grounding in Jesuit spirituality, the reader will come to appreciate how the church in Latin America shapes the pope’s vision. Aparecida, the CELAM conference of 2007, allowed the bishops of Latin America, after several years of meetings with clergy and laity, to outline a plan of the life of the local church. As Ivereigh notes this experience strengthened Francis’s conviction regarding a synodal structure for the whole church. He applied this method to the two year synod of the family which produced his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. Interestingly enough, it was Pope Benedict XVI who encouraged the revival of CELAM as an active episcopal conference.

As with other issues Francis perceives clericalism as the primary source of scandal and the root cause of fear. The longest and most painful chapter addresses the sex abuse crisis. Most moving, however is Ivereigh’s description of the pope admitting that he was wrong on the Barros case and his response in Chile. Following the pattern of his subsequent work with the Bishops of Chile, the pope sent Fr. Cantalamessa, the preacher to the papal household, to give a retreat to the U.S. Bishops. Francis wanted conversion, not just new policies and structures. In his own discernment the holy Father came to see the victims, the press, and other critics of the church doing the work of the Holy Spirit. He wanted the U.S. hierarchy to hear the same call.

The final chapter, “Mercy and its Discontents” as well as the Epilogue provide fine summaries of the detailed teachings of Francis offered in previous chapters centered on Laudatosi and Amoris Laetitia. To the surprise of some, the details make clear a consistency of teaching from Vatican II though John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Pope Francis makes frequent references to the work of his predecessors. The real difference lies in the current pope’s pastoral practice. To this he was converted.

Finding desolation at the end of his term as Jesuit Provincial, Jorge Bergoglio found consolation when he again had the opportunity to draw near to people in the ministry of pastoral care. He learned again to locate himself among the poor and honed this closeness to the people when called to be Archbishop. In his own going out to the peripheries he found again a consoling and powerful presence of Christ. While creeds, doctrines, and moral systems have their place none of them can supplant the encounter with Christ as the essential experience of Christian faith. Ivereigh leads the reader to understand how the encounter with Christ, the experience of Great Mercy, stands central to Pope Francis’s own life, to what he sees as the life of the Church, and ultimately to what he sees as the gift of the Church to the world.

A fitting conclusion recognizes the differences in papal style and way of seeing the work on the church and her ministers. Ivereigh summarizes Fr. Cantalamessa’s invitation to the U.S. Bishops on retreat in January 2019. He invited them “to imagine the barque of Saint Peter no as a rowboat driven by their efforts, but a sailboat carried along by the winds of the Holy Spirit. Their task was to set the sails, trust their wounded shepherd to captain them, and, when the time was right, listen for instructions being called out from the shore.” I hope the Philadelphia columnist has a chance to read Ivereigh’s fine book.