Let Us Dream - The Path To A Better Future

If you really want to understand Pope Francis this is the book for you.

It is a beautiful vision of how the world could emerge from the trauma of Covid but it is more than the Pope giving us a succinct version of his recent encyclical. It gives us a real ringside seat into his spirituality and how as a shepherd who wants to smell like the sheep, his heart beats for the one billion flock he leads.

Anyone familiar with the words of Pope Francis will recognise the regular themes of his thoughts about the economy, politics and ecology. But the book is also full of fascinating personal insights - I was particular amused at how he used to think a few years ago that the Brazilian bishops were going over the top when they spoke about the problems in the Amazon.

We learn how his passion for creation, it seems, is based on his prayerful reflection on experiences such as meeting people at the sharp end of environmental degradation and hearing their pain and struggle for survival.

For the Pope, Covid is a kind of challenging Kairos moment - or to use less grandiose language when you are knocked off your horse like St Paul. Pope Francis sees the trauma of the virus as a call to conversion for the world, society, the Church and our own personal faith journeys.

He compares it to getting sent off in a soccer match - and how sitting on the touchlines gives you plenty of time for reflection

He gives some wonderful examples of his own lived experience based on the "three Covids" in his own life and how these experiences of "purification" shaped the man.

I won't go into details as it would spoil the joy of what he has to share.

We learn too of his own inner thoughts following the hotly disputed synods on the family and his thought processes on the Amazon Synod and the calls for relaxing priestly celibacy.

Breaking news - the Pope believes everything the Church does should be rooted in prayer.

This is not the Pope Francis of the florid fantasies of self-righteous Catholic bloggers, but a true shepherd who we saw at his best interceding alone in a deserted St Peters Square on a rainy March evening.

That very event inspired papal biographer Austen Ivereigh to embark on a series of interviews which have given us this remarkable book.

In his postscript Austen writes that those close to the Pope say that in lockdown he was "energized" by what he saw as a threshold moment and the movement of spirits beneath its surface.

For this reader, Let Us Dream has "energized" me in my appreciation of this papacy.

Let Us Dream is published by Simon & Schuster - for more details and order see: www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Let-Us-Dream/Pope-Francis/9781398502208

NOTE: On Saturday 30th January from 11 am until 12.30 pm Dr Austen Ivereigh will speak about 'Let us Dream' online. To access this livestream event please go to www.ssppilford.org.uk and click on live stream remote services. The event, which is sponsored by Gidea Park parish in conjunction with Brentwood Interfaith, will be available subsequently on www.whatgoodnews.org Questions for Austen may be emailed beforehand to adriangraffy@dioceseofbrentwood.org