Massimo Borghesi – författare

2022 Catholic Media Association honorable mention Pope Francis

2022 Catholic Media Association honorable mention in English translation editionOne element of the church that Pope Francis was elected to lead in 2013 was an ideology that might be called the “American” model of Catholicism—the troubling result of efforts by intellectuals like Michael Novak, George Weigel, and Richard John Neuhaus to remake Catholicism into both a culture war colossus and a prop for ascendant capitalism.After laying the groundwork during the 1980s and armed with a selective and manipulative reading of Pope John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, these neoconservative commentators established themselves as authoritative Catholic voices throughout the 1990s, viewing every question through a liberal-conservative ecclesial-political lens. The movement morphed further after the 9/11 terror attacks into a startling amalgamation of theocratic convictions, which led to the troubling theo-populism we see today.The election of the Latin American pope represented a mortal threat to all of this, and a poisonous backlash was inevitable, bringing us to the brink of a true “American schism.” This is the drama of today’s Catholic Church. In Catholic Discordance: Neoconservatism vs. the Field Hospital Church of Pope Francis, Massimo Borghesi—who masterfully unveiled the pope’s own intellectual development in his The Mind of Pope Francis—analyzes the origins of today’s Catholic neoconservative movement and its clash with the church that Francis understands as a “field hospital” for a fragmented world.

A commonly held impression is that Pope Francis is a compassionate shepherd and determined leader but that he lacks the intellectual depth of his recent predecessors. Massimo Borghesi’s The Mind of Pope Francis: Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s Intellectual Journey dismantles that image.

Borghesi recounts and analyzes, for the first time, Bergoglio’s intellectual formation, exploring the philosophical, theological, and spiritual principles that support the profound vision at the heart of this pope’s teaching and ministry. Central to that vision is the church as a coincidentia oppositorum, holding together what might seem to be opposing and irreconcilable realities. Among his guiding lights have been the Jesuit saints, Ignatius and Peter Faber; philosophers Gaston Fessard, Romano Guardini, and Alberto Methol Ferrer; and theologians Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Recognizing how these various strands have come together to shape the mind and heart of Jorge Mario Bergoglio offers essential insights into who he is and the way he is leading the church. Notably, this groundbreaking book is informed by four interviews provided to the author, via audio recordings, by the pope himself on his own intellectual formation, major portions of which are published here for the first time.